Posted by Spring time is a good time to cook dishes with lamb offal.
I buy lamb which less than one year old, and weigh no more than 12 kilograms.
Of course you can buy offal separately if you wish.
The most typical dish we cook is a lamb offal soup the night before Easter. I like this dish, but I wanted to try something new this time.
So I marinated the offal (liver, lung, heart, sweetbreads) in red wine and oregano just to moderate the strong odor of the material, and then diced it finely.
I prepared a mix of fresh onion, fresh garlic, parsley, dill, fresh oregano, pickled hot peppers and placed it in a big pan with olive oil, salt and pepper. If you like, you can add some sultana raisins for sweetness and pine kernels for texture. After the greens started sweating, I threw in the diced offal and let it cook for about five minutes. After that I took the offal out of the pan, added the juice of one lemon to the mix (it needs the acidity to counter the intensity of the offal) and slowly reduced the liquids of the greens so that the mix is juicy with being runny.
In parallel, in a pot I prepared sticky rice with salt and added at the last minute of big dollop of butter.
I served the rice and offal in separate partitions of the plate, and added some strained yogurt because it adds a feeling of smoothness which I enjoy after the encounter with the intensity of the offal. The red bits that you see on the plate are chili pepper flakes.
The rice and yogurt work well together to enhance and promote the offal, which dressed in its green glory is hot, aromatic and powerful. The tricky part of the dish is the offal – greens ratio. Too little offal and you have a warm funny tasting green salad. Too little, and you are over powered by the offal.
I served the dish with a red wine from the area of Monemvasia on the Peloponnese, called “Monemvassios 2006“. It is a blend of St. George’s red and Mavroudi. I liked its balance and moderate intensity.