Effortful Meh, and Sugar

It's been a not-on-holiday week here. We were supposed to be on the Isle of Lewis (where I have never been) for a friend's wedding - the wedding was cancelled and we didn't make the trip but kept the days off. I thought that perhaps we'd be able to do some fun things like cycle new places, but instead there was a lot of rain and some half-hearted DIY. Some meals have been enlivened by the delivery of exciting things from Cley Smokehouse, as recommended by Melinda, paired with the bread deliveries that made for much fancier lunch than normal. Overall though, it's been something of a meh week.

This was not helped by deciding to make something from the Cook for Syria recipe book. I chose Mukloubi bi Lahmi, which is translated in the book as "Upside Down Lamb Cake", and is a lamb/rice/aubergine dish. It's also a very badly written recipe. One of the reasons I decided to try it was that it involves cooking the lamb for about 2 hours, which is the kind of thing I only have the patience for on holidays or weekends. The instructions for cooking the lamb said "combine the lamb with the spice mix, lemon juice, cinnamon stick, bay leaves and bring to the boil". There was not much lemon juice, and no mention of covering it all with water - I extrapolated that essential from the mention of lamb stock much further down the recipe. The spice mix was paprika, cumin, ground coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and black pepper, all of which I had, so that was easy. What I ended up doing was browning the lamb in some olive oil, coating it in the spice mix, then chucking in everything else and covering it in water then leaving it to simmer away for the requisite two hours.

Instructions for the aubergine weren't significantly better. The very beginning of the recipe said to slice an aubergine, soak it in salted water for 30 minutes then leave to dry for a couple of hours - fine, at least the instruction was at the beginning. You were then supposed to fry the aubergine slices, although there was absolutely no indication of how well fried they were meant to be. I opted for golden brown as a guess. When the lamb was cooked and the aubergine suitably fried, it was layered up with well rinsed rice in a small casserole dish, covered with the mysteriously created lamb stock and left to simmer on the hob for 30 minutes. To serve, place a plate over the casserole dish and flip the whole thing upside down. We had to go hunting for the extra big plate for this!

Before flipping the casserole dish

Flipped on to the plate

After all that time, and guessing what the recipe assumed I knew about what I should be doing at any given stage, it was a bit disappointing. It was nice enough, but the mixture of spices didn't really come through (and that was despite keeping the original spice mix, despite halving the rest of the recipe). I'm not saying I'd never make it again, but it wouldn't be a first choice.

I cut my losses with the rest of the week and made a risotto with left over roast chicken. And tablet. Pure sugary Scottish goodness which always cheers me up.

A not good photo of a very good thing