My very first holiday was to Rhodes, Greece and I loved it. The food was gorgeous, everyone was super friendly and the whole place was just beautiful. It is a place we can happily say we would go back again in a heartbeat.
Now our first night in our hotel they had a traditional greek BBQ night and put on a beautiful buffet of lots of various greek dishes, I remember some of them so well as I kept going back for more. And this was one of the dishes I enjoyed the most. The meat was tender, the vegetables still had a little bite (just how I like them) and the flavour was just delicious.
So of course we had to experiment and make our own version that we could enjoy and remember our amazing holiday with.
We learnt that this dish was a centuries old dish that was served as a one pot meal and it would have been baked in a home’s wood burning oven. There was instances where a home didn’t have an oven but each village had at least one bakery supplying bread for the guaranteed demand of the villagers. It was common for families to take their dishes to the bakery and have their meal cooked in the bakers oven…. I love a bit of History.
Some recommended items from our kitchen to make this dish…
- A big time saver for chopping veg with a veg chopper, from onions to carrots this is a god send to chop quickly.
- Double sided dry and liquid measuring spoons for times when you need to measure both liquid and dry ingredients.
- A decent set of knives for chopping, with a knife sharpener which is always handy.
- Skillet pans, not only are they great for frying but they can also go in the oven.
**NOTE: just a quick note about the seasoning we use in this dish, we have used a spice kit available from SpiceNTice which have all the spices you need all included in one kit so we don’t need to rummage through the spice cupboard for lots of different ones. Their spice kits and rubs are all Slimming Club friendly (Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Calorie counting etc). For 10% off your order you can use our code HICKMAN10 at the checkout.
Don’t forget to take a pic of your dish and tag us over on Instagram or Facebook @hickmans_slim_kitchen we love to see the recreations.
Also please make sure you credit us when sharing our recipes on social media. You can do this by directly linking back to the blog or tagging our social media pages.
Thank you.
Please note some posts contain affiliate links, you can find out what that means here.
Serves 6
INGREDIENTS:
- 1kg lamb, fat removed and diced
- 2 red onions, peeled and diced
- 2 large carrots, chopped
- 1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons tomato puree
- 125ml red wine (you can also use a red wine stock pot in replace of this but we highly recommend the wine)
- 2 teaspoons SpiceNTice chimichurri rub (**See note above about this rub)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 250g orzo pasta
METHOD:
- Marinate the lamb in the SpiceNTice rub for a minimum of 2 hours in the fridge or over night for best flavour.
- Preheat oven 160°C fan.
- Heat a skillet pan with a little frylight or oil and fry the lamb in batches just to seal the meat, spoon onto a plate to rest.
- Fry the onion and carrot in the same pan for a few minutes just to get them started to cook, transfer to the same plate with the lamb for the time being.
- Deglaze the same pan with the wine and reduce it down, add the tomato puree, tin tomatoes and 250ml water.
- Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.
- Add the lamb and vegetables back into the pan and stir to coat everything in the sauce. Add in the cinnamon stick.
- Cover the pan with tin foil (shiny side down) and place in the oven for 1hr 30 minutes.
- Take the stew out the oven and add the orzo pasta, stirring it through to make sure its all coated in the remaining sauce.
- Place back in the oven uncovered for 15 – 20 minutes or until the sauce is absorbed and the pasta is cooked. Add a little extra water if needed if the pasta isn’t cooked enough and the liquid is all gone. (Please note different brands of orzo will cook quicker than others, so please use your own judgement on cooking times).
- Remove the cinnamon stick before serving.
- Serve with vegetables and maybe a slice of bread to mop up those juices.
Hickmans Slim Kitchen 