Slow Cooked Lamb, Artichoke & Olive Stew

This is a hearty, yet not at all heavy, amalgam of seasons - chunks of lamb shoulder are braised until meltingly tender in white wine and tomatoes while artichokes, vibrant green olives and the mint scattered over keep it fresh and lively.

This is perfect really for that between season time of later winter and early spring when warmer days start to feel a reality. But honestly, as I post this in the middle of summer it would be pretty good now too.


Lamb, Artichoke & Olive Stew
serves 2

400g lamb shoulder, trimmed of fat and cut into 1-2 in. chunks
1-2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
tin / carton chopped plum tomatoes
75ml dry white wine
125ml lamb stock
pinch of cinnamon
50g green olives (I used Nocellara del Belice), pitted halved
tin artichokes rinsed and halved
zest and juice of ½ lemon
2.5g fresh mint leaves, julienned

Season the lamb with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Heat about ½ tbsp of olive oil in a heavy bottomed frying or sauté pan over a medium heat and brown the meat on all sides in batches, adding a little more oil to the pan between batches if necessary. Transfer to the slow cooker.

Add another tbsp of oil to the pan and over a low-medium heat, sauté the onion with a little pinch of salt for about 5 minutes until the onion is slightly browned. Add the garlic and continue to sauté for a minute or two until fragrant.

Turn up the heat and add the wine, allowing it to bubble up. Scrape up any stuck on bits to the pan and after a minutes or so add the contents of the pan to the slow cooker.

Add the tomatoes, cinnamon and stock to the slow cooker and put on low for 6 hours.

After 5 hours stir in the olives.

Finally, add the artichokes, lemon zest and juice in the last half hour.

Adjust the seasoning as needed and serve, dividing the stew between warmed bowls and garnish with the fresh mint. The stew can be served on its own with a good piece of bread to mop up the juices or over polenta, couscous, potatoes...

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Roasted Artichoke Risotto

I’d eaten a ridiculous amount of red meat in the weeks preceding this, in fact the week before, when the bf was away I think every evening meal I’d had was mince of one description or another. By this point then I was craving vegetables. We started the new week off with the mushroom ragout as previously posted but that wasn’t enough.

So I decided on a risotto. Killing two birds with one stone really: my continued point-proving that actually yes, we eat a reasonable amount of risotto plus it is something that is dead simple to have as part of a meatless meal. You choose your vegetable(s) and how to prepare them then add to a basic risotto bianco.

Couldn’t be easier really.


Roasted Artichoke Risotto
serves 2

500ml chicken (or vegetable) stock (you may not need all of it)
2 tsp olive oil
1 small knob of butter
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick of celery, trimmed and finely chopped
150g risotto rice
85ml of vermouth (or dry white wine)
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
20 g butter
35g Parmesan cheese, grated + extra to serve
1 tin artichoke hearts in brine, rinsed, drained and roughly chopped
zest and juice of ½ lemon
small handful mint, finely chopped
extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Lay the artichoke heart pieces on a baking tray and drizzle with a little olive oil. Toss around to coat the artichokes and then pop in the oven to roast for around 30 minutes until slightly criosp and charred on the outside and creamy in the middle.

Meanwhile put the hot stock in a saucepan on a low heat to keep warm on the hob.

Put 2 teaspoons of olive oil and the butter into a separate pan and add the onion, garlic, celery and a little pinch of salt. Cook over a very low heat, very gently for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables have softened but not coloured.

Turn up the heat and add the rice, stirring around for a couple of minutes until the rice is toasted . Pour in the vermouth which will bubble up madly so keep stirring until it has cooked into the rice.

Add your first ladle of hot stock. Turn the heat down to a simmer and stir occasionally until the stock is absorbed: keep repeating with additional ladlefuls of stock, only adding another when the previous has been absorbed into the rice. You don’t need to stir constantly, but reasonably often as this massages the starch out of the rice and will result in a creamy risotto.

You are done when the rice is soft but with a slight bite: this can take anything from 15 to 30 minutes in my experience. If you run out of stock (which is unlikely) add some boiling water.

Remove from the heat and add half of the artichokes, the butter, lemon juice and Parmesan. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minute so that the risotto becomes creamy and oozy.

Toss the remaining artichokes with most of the lemon zest, the chopped mint and a drizzle of olive oil.

Carefully check the risotto seasoning and then divide it between two plates or wide bowls and sprinkle the dressed artichokes on top. Serve sprinkled with a little extra Parmesan and the rest of the lemon zest.

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Lemon Asparagus & Artichoke Farfalle

It was hot the day I made this: hot and muggy and I was distinctly lacking in cooking motivation so I opted for pasta - one of the easiest things to fall back on when you just can’t really be bothered, in my opinion.

I have a document on my laptop just for pasta recipes and a board on pinterest too - we have pasta weekly so it makes sense that I have a lot of inspiration to keep things interesting. And the inspiration for this one can be found here. The original called for making a white sauce with flour, butter & milk but I opted for half fat crème fraîche and egg instead for the creamy sauce. A trick I had employed previously in fact in this pasta recipe.


Lemon Artichoke & Asparagus Farfalle
serves 2

150g farfalle pasta
½ tin artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed & quartered
10-15 asparagus tips, cut in 1-1½ in lengths
½ tbsp lemon juice + ½ tsp lemon zest
white wine
knob of butter
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 egg yolk
2 heaped tbsp crème fraîche
sea salt + freshly ground black pepper to taste
shaved parmesan or pecorino

Whisk together the yolk and crème fraîche in a small bowl and set aside.

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions.

Meanwhile, spray a large pan or non stick skillet with cooking spray. Add artichoke hearts, lemon juice, and lemon zest and cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add asparagus with a splash of white wine and cook another 2-4 minutes until tender, stirring throughout.

Remove asparagus & artichoke from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add butter and garlic to pan and stir for 1 minute until garlic is fragrant.

Tip in the pasta and pour over the crème fraîche, stirring to coat the pasta in the sauce. Carefully stir in the artichokes and asparagus.

Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with parmesan cheese.

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Artichoke Chicken with Polenta

There’s a website I check out every now and then called Budget Bytes - in fact it was where I got inspiration for the “one-pot” pasta - and I saw this recipe a while ago instantly bookmarking it to adapt at some later point. Anything with artichoke hearts in it is a winner for me as I absolutely love them and this is fairly quick to chuck together of an evening and I think would probably be pretty good when cooking for friends too.

The original suggests serving with pasta but I opted to have this with polenta. My most recent batch - having scoured supermarket after supermarket for the stuff after my last lot had run out - was eventually bought at an Italian deli in Borough Market and as such it is the “proper” stuff rather than the quick variety I’d hitherto, and unknowingly I might add, used. What this means is that it is 45 minutes in the cooking. And stirring. If you don’t like cooking risotto do not under any circumstances buy proper polenta as it will drive you nuts.


Artichoke Chicken
serves 2

300g skinless chicken breast fillets, pounded flat, each breast cut into 3 pieces
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
½ tbsp capers
small tin chopped tomatoes
½ tin artichoke hearts, roughly chopped
½ tsp dried basil
½ tsp onion granules
1 tsp lemon zest (about ½ medium lemon)
small handful parsley leaves, finely chopped
polenta to serve

Season the chicken lightly on both sides with salt & pepper.

Heat ½ tablespoon of olive oil in a large sauté pan over a medium heat and when hot add the chicken pieces. Cook for about 5 mins per side until golden. Remove the chicken to a plate once browned and set aside.

Add the remaining olive oil, along with the garlic to the pan and lightly fry the garlic for 1-2 minutes until fragrant but not coloured.

Add the chopped artichoke hearts, chopped tomatoes, dried basil, lemon zest, onion granules, red pepper flakes, capers and a small pinch of salt.

Stir well and return the chicken to the pan, nestling it down into the sauce. Bring to the boil then turn down to low and let the chicken simmer for 15 minutes, flipping it once half way through.

Stir through most of the chopped parsley then serve over polenta, sprinkling the remaining parsley on top.

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Peppered Fillet Steak with Artichoke & Sunblush Tomato Salad

This is adapted from a recipe I saw on the BBC Good Food website - they had said to use grilled marinated artichoke hearts (so feel free to do so) but instead I used half a tin of artichoke hearts in brine, rinsed, drained and quartered them, then added a couple of bits from a jar of marinated then drizzled over some of the oil from the jar.

The artichokes were then roasted in a preheated oven at about 200C for around 30 minutes. The result was delicious home-roasted artichokes, slightly crisp & charred in places with lovely creamy centres.

I also got a couple of pieces of excellent beef fillet from The Ginger Pig in Borough Market. Really then this is a fairly “special occasion” meal owing to the cost of the fillet but hey I was then due to be off work for 4 days so that was cause for celebration enough.

Peppered Fillet Steak with Artichoke & Sunblush Tomato Salad
serves 2

2 fillet steaks (about 140g each)
1 tbsp dried pink peppercorn, crushed slightly using a pestle & mortar
good quality extra virgin olive oil
250g grilled baby artichoke hearts, quartered (see note above)
85g mixed salad leaves
100g grilled peppers
10 SunBlush tomatoes
good quality balsamic vinegar

Heat oven to 180C.

Season the beef with salt, then rub in the crushed peppercorns. Heat a sauté or frying pan over a medium high heat and when hot add a small splash of oil. Sear the steaks for 1 minute each side then place on a roasting tray and put in the oven for 5-8 mins.

Remove, wrap tightly in foil, then leave to rest while making the salad.

Put the salad leaves in a bowl with the peppers, artichokes and tomatoes and drizzle in a little olive oil.

Season and toss around then arrange on plates and drizzle some balsamic over the top.

Remove beef from the foil and slice.

Arrange the slices of fillet on the plates alongside the salad and serve.

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Chicken & Artichoke Pilaf

This is adapted from a recipe I saw on Serious Eats where chicken braised in broth-cooked rice combine with Greek flavors like lemon, oregano, and feta cheese.

Nestling the chicken into the cooking rice in this way not only gives you beautifully moist and tender chicken but also rice that is infused with lovely chicken aroma and flavour. The lemon and feta brighten and lighten up the whole thing. And artichoke? Well artichoke is just delicious and also happens to pair terrifically with both rice and chicken.

Ideally the chicken thighs would have been skin-on and crisped prior to being nestled into the rice but I was trying to reduce the contents of the freezer and skinless was all we had.


Chicken & Artichoke Pilaf
serves 2

4 chicken thigh fillets
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
125g basmati rice
325ml chicken stock
150g tinned artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed and cut into chunks
1 tbsp fresh juice and 1 tsp zest from ½ a lemon
50g feta cheese, crumbled 

Season the chicken well with salt, pepper, and half of the oregano. 

Heat the oil in a frying or sauté pan that you can cover, over medium-high heat until lightly smoking. 

Add the chicken and cook until browned, about 3-5 minutes before flipping and browning the other side.

Remove to a plate and set aside.

Discard all but 1-2 tbsp of fat from the pan and reheat over a medium heat.

Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring, until softened, and scraping up any stuck on chicken bits about 5 minutes. Add the remaining oregano and garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add the rice, stirring until fragrant and lightly toasted, about 1 minute, then add the stock and artichoke hearts and stir together.

Nestle the chicken thighs half into the rice and lower the heat to a simmer.

Cover and cook until the chicken and rice are done 15 to 20 minutes more.

Carefully stir through the lemon juice and serve sprinkled with lemon zest and feta. 

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Spinach & Artichoke One-Pot Pasta

I have to admit to being extremely sceptical about the concept of one-pot pasta especially as the original came from, I believe, Martha Stewart. Enough said. This feeling of, shall we say, misgiving, didn’t improve when, a mere 48 hours before my intended cook date (which in itself was some time after “discovery date”) I read a rather scathing write up on Helen Graves’ food blog.

Oh well, I’d committed myself (in my head) and so misgivings or not I would be going through with my plan. After all, it is well known (isn’t it?) that a bit of pasta cooking water added to a pasta sauce is a good thing, lending as it does an added silkiness enabling more clinginess to the pasta.

But anyway, if you haven’t come across it before the idea of one-pot pasta is fairly straight forward and self-explanatory: the pasta and all the ingredients cook together in a stock in one pan: the intention being that the stock gets absorbed by the pasta and creates a thick, starchy, flavorful sauce. 

So there you have it.

I deviated slightly as I fried my onion off a bit (i’m not a fan of onion semi-rawness and wasn’t going to take the risk).

So - the verdict? Well in all honesty I’m mixed. First impressions were that the pasta was way overcooked. Which it most definitely was of course - Italian’s would find it an abomination - and it needed a surprising amount of seasoning before serving but all being said I really did like the flavour.

Yes, the one-pot thing is really handy in one way but you do have to keep stirring anyway so in all honesty I think a much better result could be had by cooking the sauce in a separate pot then adding your drained pasta when it is about 3 minutes from al dente. Mix the pasta in with the sauce then cover, off the heat and leave the flavours to infuse and the starchiness leach out of the pasta slightly for 5-10 minutes. Now this is something that is sometimes done in Italian pasta cooking - as previously displayed in the Sicilian knockoff here.


Spinach & Artichoke One Pot Pasta

serves 3, heartily

165g mushrooms, sliced
½-1 can artichoke hearts (in water) - about 175g, drained & roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 small onion, finely sliced
825 ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp olive oil
200g fettuccine
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp dried thyme
freshly ground pepper
90g frozen spinach

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and lightly sauté the onion for 5 minutes.

Add the vegetable stock, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, onions, fettuccine, oregano, thyme, and a really good grinding of freshly ground pepper into the pot. 

Push the ingredients down under the stock as much as possible and bring to a boil. Stir the pot to evenly distribute the ingredients and prevent the pasta from sticking. Then turn the heat down to a low simmer and pop a lid on.

Allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the pasta is tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed but do give the pan a good stir every few minutes to prevent the pasta from sticking.

Once the pasta is al dente add the frozen spinach, stirring to help break up the clumps of spinach as they melt. Season well.

Serve immediately topped with a little Parmesan.

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Fettucine with lamb & artichoke ragu

If you’ve read the post on Rome you will have seen that I ate an excellent Tuscan pasta dish of lamb and artichokes that I enjoyed so much I really wanted to try and recreate it at some point.

With that in mind I bought a (rather expensive) jar of lovely little chargrilled baby artichokes in extra virgin oil in Volpetti while in Rome. The original dish I ate almost certainly used fresh artichokes - it was artichoke season after all.  But the artichoke season is pretty short and  in any case I really liked the look of the jarred ones I bought.

I also bought a bottle of good white truffle oil and while there didn’t seem to be any truffle in the dish that I ate in Rome it seems to me to be a good addition.

So this is the recipe that I’ve come up with and I think it’s a pretty good facsimile.

Fettucine con ragu bianco di agnello e carciofi
Serves 2 

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 medium banana shallot, finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic (I used 3 cloves wet garlic)
200g lamb mince
3 baby chargrilled artichokes in olive oil (only use 1 or 2 if larger)
3-4 sage leaves, finely chopped
sprig of rosemary, needles finely chopped
juice of ½ lemon
small glass of white wine
250ml lamb stock
sea salt and white pepper
200g dried fettucine
truffle oil (optional)
freshly grated aged parmesan reggiano to serve
finely chopped parsley to serve

Heat the oil in a wide heavy-based frying or sauté pan then fry the shallots over a lowish heat until softened (about 5 minutes). Meanwhile slice the artichokes thinly and then cut the slices lengthwise - set aside.

Add the garlic to the shallots and continue to stir for a couple of minutes.

Push the shallots and garlic to the side of the pan, turn the heat up and brown the lamb, breaking it up as you fry it.

Add the herbs and the sliced artichokes and continue to cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the wine and let this bubble away and reduce while you put the salted water on for the pasta.

After about 5 minutes the wine should have mostly evaporated so add the broth and lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste (remembering that the stock, if from a cube will be fairly salty) and turn the heat down to low. 

Cover the pan by three-quarters and let simmer for about 15 minutes until the meat mixture is moist but not liquid. Cook the pasta according to the instructions.

Drain the fettucine, making sure to reserve a little of the pasta water then stir both the pasta and reserved water (a few tbsps worth) into the sauce. The sauce should cling silkily to the pasta strands.

Serve, trickling over a little truffle oil if using, plus scatter over some grated parmesan and a little chopped parsley.

Welcome to my new favourite pasta dish...

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