We had a truly yummy dinner tonight, and have been talking about future dinners.

The first was lamb tagine…I adore Middle Eastern flavours, but don’t actually make much of it. Maybe I should make it a culinary goal. I do like the basic kebab you get in street stalls which is a pitta bread wrapped around felafel (or meat, but we don’t do that), salad and sauces. But I also like tagines, flat breads, sauces and dips, eggplant, garlic, yum, yum yum.

So lamb tagine has been a recipe that I really like, served with rice or couscous. Unfortunately, the girls don’t much like couscous (and to tell the truth neither does Adrian). I’m not sure that this tagine is all that traditional, but the flavours are lovely, so if you like this kind of food give it a go. There are a lot of ingredients, but most of them are spices which are used to marinate the lamb.

First, cut up 1kg (2lbs) lamb or any red meat would work beautifully.

In a plastic bag (big enough to fit all the meat), mix together your spices: 2tsp paprika (I like to use smoked paprika), 1/4tsp turmeric, 1/4tsp cayenne, 1/4tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp salt, 1/2tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp ground ginger. If you don’t have one or two of these, it’s probably ok…I didn’t have cardamom and it was still great.

Mix 2 tbsp oil with the lamb, then add to the bag of spices, mix around and put in the fridge overnight.

The next day, heat up a pan and brown the lamb in batches. Remove it from the pan. Add 2 cubed onions and 4-5 chopped carrots. Cook for 5 minutes, then add 2 cloves of chopped garlic and 1tbsp grated fresh/frozen ginger. Cook for another 5 minutes. Return the lamb back to the pan with the zest of a lemon, 1 tbsp tomato paste, 1tbsp honey and 500ml stock. Being very virtuous tonight, I used the stock I’d made from the lamb bones I had left when I cut up the lamb for marinading yesterday.

Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours till the lamb is super tender. If the gravy is a bit on the runny side for your liking, add 1tbsp cornflour mixed with 1tbsp water.

This does have a little spice from the cayenne, so leave it out if spicy is not you. Please try it, it is absolutely lovely!

Secondly, we’ve been talking about future dinners, and particularly chickens. We have, as I’ve mentioned previously, killed our own chickens, and they are a reasonably sized bird. They do take several months to a year to get to a good size and they are really tasty. So we’ve been talking about getting Cobb chickens. These guys get big quickly. How big? About 2 1/2 kgs (carcass weight)! How quickly? About 8 weeks! That’s almost fast food in this neck of the woods! The downside is that they grow so quickly that their bone structure can’t support their weight and they generally end up immobile by the time they’re slaughtered. Not our idea of animal welfare really, but no wonder they have such pale, insipid, huge breasts! There is an alternative, however, and that is to grow them free range, feed them “normal” food rather than food designed specifically for meat birds, and therefore to grow them slower to the same size and get a carcass with more flavour. That seems like a plan to us, so now all we have to do is source these special birds, which are available at a couple of large hatcheries with a minimum purchase of 300 1-day old chicks! That might be a few too many for us,well, for a start anyway. So if you know a friendly Cobb breeder, let us know won’t you.