Wood-fired!

Persian lamb stew

I’ve made this stunning, simple stew a number of times but finally got round to taking a pic before serving it so thought it was time to post.

The original recipe is by Neil Perry from his tome The Food I Love. My variations are minor. This is Neil’s recipe:

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• 700g lamb shoulder
• 80ml extra virgin olive oil + extra
• 2 brown onions, cut into 1cm dice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 4 cardamom pods, split, seeds removed and crushed
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 375ml chicken stock (I used 500ml)
• 110g (½ cup) pitted prunes (I used more)
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar
• juice of 2 limes
• ¼ teaspoon saffron threads, dissolved in 1 tablespoon boiling water
• 1 large handful mint, roughly chopped
• roasted almonds or pistachios to garnish

For the pumpkin
• 400g butternut pumpkin, peeled and cut into 3.5cm dice
• sea salt
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

To make the lamb stew, cut the lamb into 4 cm dice. Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan. Add the lamb in batches, stir over medium to high heat until browned, then remove from the pan. Add extra oil to the pan if need be, then add the onion and stir until lightly browned. Add the spices and sea salt and stir for 1 minute, or until fragrant. Add the stock. Return lamb to the pan and simmer over low heat, covered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Add the prunes, sugar, lime juice, and saffron water. Cover and simmer for a further 30 minutes, or until the lamb is very tender.

Meanwhile, for the pumpkin, preheat the oven to 200°C. Combine the pumpkin pieces with some sea salt and the extra virgin olive oil. Put in a roasting tin and bake for about 20 minutes, or until just tender and lightly browned all over.

Add the pumpkin and the mint to the stew.

Serve the stew in a large bowl, with a bowl of rice in the middle of the table. Garnish the dish with the roasted almonds or pistachios if you like. Serves 4.

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The choice of lamb seems to have the greatest influence on the dish. The first time I made this I used the shoulder as Neil suggests. In subsequent preparations I was lazy and used either leg or pre-cubed lamb from the butcher. Although it took some time to bone and prepare the meat from the shoulder the result was far superior. As well as the more intense flavour, the larger cubes that you can cut yourself seem to work better and I think the shoulder gave a better overall texture to the dish.

I used a few more prunes than the recipe indicates but this should be offset by leaving out the sugar if they are very sweet.

Adjust the stock to the amount of liquid you like in the final stew. I think it needed 500ml.

Be careful not to overcook the pumpkin - it needs to retain its form in the stew (however undercooked pumpkin is a deeper sin).

The photo at the top of this post does not have the roasted nut garnish. (I find that if I don’t prepare the garnish before I cook the dish I’m inclined to not bother at the end.)

Neil suggests rice as the starch but of course it works very well with couscous. Hope you enjoy it.

5 comments August 31st, 2008

Ripe roses

The rich colours of these roses intensified as they dried. Nice colour mix for an ice-cream! Thanks to Vanessa for the flowers.

1 comment August 18th, 2008

Clamping mitre joints

A recent project (Sixty by six) used simple mitre joints on the four corners of the ‘cabinet’. I’ve used a technique for clamping this joint that I learnt from George Ingham.

I’ve really got no idea whether this is a commonly used technique but I can’t recall ever seeing it documented and suspect it may not be widely used. I’m very interested to discover how other woodworkers deal with this problem.

Regardless of the type of mitre joint - whether it contains hidden dovetails, is the mitred corners of through dovetails or is a simple mitre relying solely on the glue - good clamping pressure is required for a pleasing visual result and a strong joint.

I often use simple butted mitres with no fancy jointing. Obviously this limits the strength of the joint as the gluing surfaces are half way between long grain (strong bond) and end grain (weak bond). In many situations this is not strong enough. But under the right conditions it is. A wood that has good general gluing properties (eg not oily) and has a reasonably open end-grain can provide a suitably strong joint at 45° to the grain. Clearly the stress that will be exerted on the joint is important which generally means this joint is suitable for smaller works. This joint relies entirely on the effectiveness of the glue so the gluing process is all important. The wood surfaces must be clean and perfectly co-planar. The glue must be fresh and strong. And the clamping pressure must be adequate - and this is the punchline to this post!

It is very difficult to get a good clamping result unless you are able to exert enough force at right-angles to the surfaces being glued. Picture frame clamps in their various forms are very poor at this. Crossed sash cramps are very hard to set up effectively and still don’t provide the pressure in the correct vector. Angled clamping blocks that rely on friction (such as sandpaper-covered blocks) may work but are fraught with potential glue-up disasters and ultimately compromise the amount of pressure you can apply.

My method is to glue clamping blocks firmly to the outside faces of the elements being joined allowing clamping directly across the perpendicular of the joint.

First the choice of blocks. I use MDF because it is softer than the wood I’m gluing so unlikely to compress it. It also breaks up in layers which makes removal at the end very easy. The shape is a triangular prism, that is a right triangle in cross-section extruded to the exact thickness of the elements being joined. You must make the blocks large enough to accomodate the pads of the clamp when they are positioned so that the pads are centred on the desired lines of force. 

I use my normal yellow glue (Titebond II at the moment) to attach the blocks. Some makers use only a dab of glue and little pressure. I prefer a stronger bond and cover most of both surfaces and just rely on the suction pressure created by rubbing the surfaces over each other until they grab.

Make sure you leave the blocks long enough for a good bond before proceeding to the next step. I try to organise my work so that the blocks can dry overnight.

As always, do a complete dry run of the clamping setup before applying any glue to the work. Then glue up as you normally do - and use the mitre blocks to achieve solid clamping pressure across the mitres. You should be able to get strong joints and a minimal glue-line.

 
Cleaning up the glued mitre is quick and easy. I do it in three stages. First I remove the bulk of the clamping block. I use a bandsaw for this.

I then remove most of the remaining material with a wide, thin chisel. This usually leaves a small amount of block material glued to the work.

The remaing MDF and glue is simply planed off leaving a clean joint.

Gluing narrow mitres was illustrated in an earlier post.

I’m very keen to hear how other woodworkers solve this problem and hope that this technique might be of some help.

8 comments August 16th, 2008