Moroccan Lamb Stew

Spring time and Easter is often filled with lamb, a protein I only recently started cooking.  Have you ever cooked lamb?

Over Christmas, Dan and I drove to his family’s in San Diego.  While we were there, we decided to stock up on some awesome Costco foods we don’t have access to here in Durango.  We got some of our favorite proteins like the frozen shrimp, individually sealed frozen fish filets like salmon, and the St. Louis style ribs for Dan to go to town with on in his Big Green Egg, among other things.  Why is everything from Costco so good??  We arrived back to our house after the 12-13 hour drive, late at night, tired, ready to hit the hay.  We brought in our big cooler so we could transfer the frozen foods (which actually stayed frozen on our drive!) into the freezer.

I opened the freezer to find it was basically only slightly chilled.  Most everything in it was still somewhat cold, (which thankfully wasn’t a whole lot since we’d cleaned it out pretty well leading up to our trip) but ruined.  Then I noticed my clear jar of olive oil on the counter.  The olive oil was frozen.  Literally turned a shade of green and was frozen.  We’d turned off the heat instead of turning it down while we were gone.  Ooops.  Can you tell we haven’t lived in a house before?  Doesn’t happen in apartments!  Also keep in mind we drove up to find a good few inches of snow outside our house.  So it had been dang cold.  It was maybe 10 degrees outside.

Turns out the coolant for our fridge and freeze froze, so it stopped working.  Go figure! Luckily, with the heat back into the house it was running fine the next day.  Little lesson for you, Dan did some research.  Apparently if you want to be thrifty in a home, sure, that’s fine. Turn down the heat to 50-55 F.  Don’t turn it off.  Because you know what else will happen?  Your mattress will freeze.

Yes, your mattress will freeze.  I was so excited to be back in our glorious bed, I literally jumped into bed as I often do, and bam!  It was hard. as. a. rock.  And freezing.  It’s not a water bed!  It’s a foam type material.  Heavenly normally.  Not when frozen.  I layered up in three pairs of pants, socks, etc. and crawled in.  We do have an electric heating pad which made its way down to my feet and literally SAVED me that night.

Oh and in case you’re wondering what we did with all those proteins we bought?  Well, being that it was well below 32 degrees out, we literally set them outside on our patio for the night.  We moved them into the house the next morning since the freezer was back in working condition.  All was not lost.

Frozen olive oil.  Warm freezer.  Frozen mattress.  What a night.

What does this have to do with Moroccan Lamb Stew?  Well one of these meats that went through quite a journey to get to my freezer was a beautiful boneless leg of lamb from our Costco run.  I tried lamb for the first time in the last year or so, and really liked it!  I am always looking for variety instead of the same old, easy, go-to proteins: chicken, salmon, beef, ground turkey, eggs.  So I challenge myself by buying something new that looks good, and I figure out what to do with it later.  Just like this!

Don’t be intimidated by the ingredient list.  Though it might be long, the instructions are quite simple.  And it’ll get you to use a lot of the spices you’ve been storing in your cabinet for far too long.  If you’re tired of the same old, same old, this recipe features a less common protein and spices you definitely don’t eat everyday.  So bust out this lazy-day-Sunday kinda stew, and prepare to drool for three hours while it cooks in the oven and the smells overtake your home.