Hi. My name is Mark and this is my cooking blog.
I get asked a lot for my recipes, so I decided to start this cooking blog. What you’ll find here will be my recipes and my variations on others’ recipes, my cooking tips and who knows what else.
I should say up front that I’m lactose intolerant (check out my lactose intolerance site www.nowhey.org) and I also try to live a low-carb lifestyle. So the recipes you’ll find here will generally be devoid of milk and milk products and try, wherever possible, to be low in carbs.
I hope you enjoy the site and the recipes.
Mark
This is a recipe that was derived from “Lamb Cacciatore” that I learned at the Viking Home Chef cooking series I took. When we hear “cacciatore” we usually think of “chicken cacciatore” which uses a tomato based sauce. “Cacciatore” means “hunter style” and in some parts of the world (most notably Germany and that region) “hunter style” means a mushroom sauce. The recipe I learned used a dark beef-based sauce but didn’t have any mushrooms. Adding the mushrooms and adapting it for the slow cooker are my contributions.
Lamb Cacciatore With Mushrooms
Ingredients:
1.5 lbs of lean lamb, cut into 1″ cubes
10-12 dried shitake mushrooms
1 cup of beef broth (made with Better than Bullion)
2 tbs red wine vinegar
¼ cup flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tbs of fresh rosemary – de-stemmed
3 fresh sage leaves (medium to large)
2-3 cloves of garlic
Rehydrate the mushrooms in cold water for several hours. (Or for 30 minutes with water you just boiled – don’t boil the mushrooms though.) Save 1 cup of the water you used to soak the mushrooms to make the beef broth with. Squeeze the excess water out of the mushrooms and cut off the stems. Slice the mushrooms and add to the crock pot.
Heat the saved 1 cup of mushroom water in the microwave and make the broth using 1 tsp of the Better Than Bullion concentrate. I add the vinegar into the broth so I can pour into the pan when ready.
Put the flour, salt and pepper into a large zip lock bag and shake to combine. Add the lamb, seal the bag and shake until the lamb is well coated and all the flour is sticking to the lamb.
Brown the lamb pieces on all sides in a large skillet with some oil. Remove the lamb and put in the crock pot. Add the beef broth and vinegar to the skillet and deglaze. Pour the liquid over the lamb.
Chiffonade the sage and chop the rosemary into fine bits and add to the pot. Crush the garlic and add to the pot. Stir to distribute the spices.
Cook on medium for 8-10 hours.
Can be made up and put in the crockpot the night before. Put the pot in the fridge – take out in the morning and start heating.
