It's now the season of quinces and oranges, and all I was thinking of these days was an orange tart, or maybe a quince marmalade. I love pastries, cakes, and sweets, but because I am not as good in baking as I am good in cooking, I always try to steer my love for sweets to cooking recipes. So I started thinking about something sweet and a little spicy as well!! I thought about chili flakes and prunes, then I thought about "meat", and it came to my mind "pork"!!! I always try to post recipes which are easy to prepare in Iran as well as here; and of course finding pork is not easy at all there and most people would avoid eating it anyway, so yes! BOOM !!! "LAMB"! I love the way we cook it in Iran, but we usually have 2/3 basic/classic recipes and we keep following them. I think because they are super delicious no one is willing to try something new! I came out with this beautiful idea of using Iranian spices and some sweet fruits to help the caramelization process. A sweet-sour-spicy lamb which is so easy to prepare and perfect for New Year's meals, bringing out all the amazing flavors of this season! Enjoy x
Serves 4 People
Ingredients:
- 4 table spoon extra virgin olive oil
- 4 lime
- fresh rosemary
- black pepper
- a plastic bag
- 5,6 table spoon olive oil
- 2000 gram lamb ribs
- 60 gram ginger
- 4 cloves of garlic
- zest of an orange
- chili flakes
- 1 teaspoon peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon
- 2 teaspoon mix of turmeric, paprika,cumin powder,mustard powder & chili powder
- 6 table spoon of honey
- 4 table spoon of tamarind sauce
- 2 lime
- 2 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
- 4 table spoon of apple vinegar
- 1-2 small quince
- 1 cup of prune
- 300 ml good quality red wine
- 600 ml chicken or veg stock
- salt
Method:
- Start to marinate your meat a night before by adding olive oil, fresh rosemary, lime and black pepper to the ribs, massage the ribs with ingredients and put them in a plastic bag and keep in the fridge overnight.
- Next day, preheat the oven to 200°C/392°F/gas 6 and put a roasting pan on high heat, add the olive oil, when is hot, remove the water from the bag of lamb ribs and add the ribs into the roasting pan, do not move the ribs a lot, as they're going to get stick into the pan for the first minutes and you don't want to break the ribs, let them be, add some salt and let them fry on high-medium heat until you can move them easily, let the ribs get colored on both side, meanwhile cut the garlic and ginger.
- If the heat is too high, bring it down a little bit, we don't want to burn the ribs but we want them very crispy and brownish! When they got colored and got quit crispy, remove the oil from the roasting pan and add the ginger and garlic and a zest of one orange, move them around to get mix with the ribs, add the chili flakes, peppercorns, and mix of spices.
- Then add the honey and tamarind sauce and move everything around so ribs can get mix with all the ingredients. Add lime, worcestershire sauce, apple vinegar, chopped quince and prunes and bring it to boil. Taste and check a little bit of broth for seasoning, add honey or tamarind, salt or pepper anything you makes it more tasty for you.
- Then add the red wine and let the alcohol evaporates, to bring out the good smell of all the ingredients. Add the chicken or veg stock and bring it to boil again, then remove it from the heat and put in oven. Reduce the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4 and let the ribs cook for 1 to 1/2 hours, check the ribs every 30 minutes, move them around to help them cook throughly. Add more stock if needed.
- After the ribs are cooked (means you can remove the bones easily from the meat) put the roasting pan on the high heat again and start caramelizing the sauce, make the ribs sauce thick and sticky and serve.
- If you want to serve the ribs simple, is better to make the sauce thicker so it's going to be very similar to texas ribs . Instead, if you like your ribs with sauce, cook them until they get caramelize and turn the heat off, let it cool a little bit and serve it with couscous, basmati rice or some bread!
- You can cook this recipe with boneless lamb too, add some extra fat to give it a good flavor.
