Being of equally frugal bent, while the stuffed eggplants were baking, I chopped up an onion and the innards of the eggplant, and sautéed them in a frying pan sprayed with olive oil cooking spray.  I sprinkled them with dried herbs – marjoram, thyme, and chervil – but any combination of your liking would do, and added a bit of garlic.  I cooked the mixture down until the eggplant and onions were quite soft.  At this point, I could have tossed the mixture into a food processor and made a nice eggplant dip, adding  bit of salt and pepper, or maybe even a spoonful or two of nonfat yogurt.  But I really didn’t need dip, and I was in the mood for something warm. So I put the mixture into the refrigerator to keep until I had more time.

The next day, I decided to make a casserole similar to moussaka, the Greek eggplant and lamb dish.  I had 3 ounces of ground lamb left, so I browned it and added it to the eggplant mixture (I think you could also make this meatless).  I crumbled about 2 ounces of fat free feta cheese into the mixture, added about ¼ cup of fat free half and half, and 1/4 – 1/2 cup of egg substitute.  I poured the whole thing into a baking dish sprayed with cooking spray and baked it at 350 for one hour.

This made 6  servings at about 2 grams of fat/serving.

And I didn’t waste any eggplant. The women of Goregaon Road would be proud of me.

Indian cooking as I learned it many years ago always started with large amounts of oil to cook the inevitable onions, garlic, and spices that made the “gravy” of curries. The authors of this book use much the same methods as I do to make their recipes low fat. They cut the amount of fat down, and use very lean cuts of meat. In cooking their recipes, I have often cut the fat even further by using cooking spray and “sweating” the onions rather than cooking them in fat, or using a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon of fat.

The weather has turned unseasonably cold (is weather ever seasonable – but 17 degrees in early October is just plain wrong.) Cold weather has me thinking of turning on the oven to get warm. After baking several loaves of banana bread, I decided to find a baked Indian dish to make with the eggplant I just bought. This dish is quite festive looking. I recommend that you grind your own lamb, either in a meat grinder (more on meat grinding in a later post) or in the food processor. Don’t over process, though. You want lamb burger, not lamb pate. This dish also mixes a lot of vegetables in with the meat, making the dish not as heavy as lamb dishes can be.  Also, it is not very spicy in terms of heat – not all Indian food is. But you could add a chili pepper or some cayenne pepper to heat it up.

Aubergines Stuffed with Lamb (That’s Eggplant to you)

Cooking spray
2 medium eggplants
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 medium onion, cut in half and sliced vertically
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 medium tomato, chopped
12 ounces of lean leg of lamb, ground
1 medium green pepper seeded and coarsely chopped
1 medium orange or red pepper seeded and coarsely chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)

Stuffed eggplant ingredients

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a baking pan large enough to hold the eggplant halves with cooking spray. Cut the eggplants in half and scoop out most of the flesh, leaving enough shell to hold the filling. (More about what to do with the eggplant innards shortly.)  Be careful not to pierce the shell. Spray the outside of the shells with cooking spray.

Spray a large saucepan (or wok in my case) with cooking spray. Add the oil and heat over medium high heat. Add the onions and fry until golden brown.  Don’t let them burn. Gradually add the ginger, chili powder, garlic, turmeric, salt and ground coriander (I mixed them together in a small bowl before I started cooking). Add the chopped tomato. Lower the heat to medium low and stir-fry for about 5 minutes.  Add the ground lamb and continue to stir-fry for 7-10 minutes, or until the lamb is no longer pink. Add the chopped peppers and chopped coriander to the lamb mixture and cook for 5 minutes more.  Spoon the lamb mixture into the shells and spray the outer edges of the shells with a little cooking spray.

Bake until the eggplant has softened and the top of filling has browned.  The recipe said that this would take about 25 minutes, but mine took almost an hour.  I think maybe the eggplants I bought were larger than the British ones.

Serve on a bed of plain rice.  This makes 4 servings at about 8 grams of fat/serving.

Variation: When I ate this, the eggplant was a little hard to tackle, although it looked really nice. So I wound up cutting the stuffed eggplant into pieces and mixing it with the rice. I wonder if you could just chop an eggplant and mix it in with the filling and bake it like a casserole?

NOTE: I couldn’t find this exact cookbook, by Shehzad Husain and Manisha Kanani on Amazon. I got it at Costco quite a while ago.  But there were similar books by these authors, written both singularly and together.

So since I was smoking a large amount of pork tenderloin in the smoker Saturday, I thought that I might as well smoke the lamb, too.  I wanted to do something interesting with it, so I made a rub that vaguely resembles Tandoori (Indian spices in yogurt) and coated the lamb before smoking. This lamb was just fabulous. The outside was a little crisp (I ran it under the broiler) and flavorful without being mouth-burning hot. The inside was pink and juicy, with a lightly smoked flavor that was not overpowering. I smoked it over apple wood, which tends to be mild. And the lamb was so tender you could cut it with a fork.

Spice-Coated Lamb Roast

1½ to 2 pounds lean boneless leg of lamb, trimmed of all visible fat
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon dried bread crumbs
3 Tablespoons non-fat yogurt
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons raisins
1 Tablespoon canola oil

In a small bowl, mix together the chili powder, garlic, coriander, cumin, and salt. In a food processor, process the bread crumbs, yogurt, lemon juice, raisins, and oil until smooth. Add the spice mixture and pulse several times to mix. Rub the mixture all over the leg of lamb. Smoke for 2½  to 3 hours (or according to your smoker’s instructions.)  I used plain water in the smoker’s water basin to keep the meat moist.  When I finished the smoking process, I thought the meat looked unattractive, so put it under the broiler for 5 minutes a side to crisp up the outside. This lamb is about 9 grams of fat for a 4 ounce serving.

Variation: The recipe I referenced for the spice coating called for the lamb to be oven roasted, so here are the instructions for roasting it more traditionally.  Make the spice coating as above. Preheat the oven to 350. After coating the lamb, wrap it in aluminum foil and roast it for about an hour. Remove the lamb from the oven, open the foil, and spoon the spice mixture over the lamb. Return to the oven and cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes more.

Lamb shanks require long, slow cooking , otherwise they would be very tough.  This is a good make ahead dish, because you will want to skim the fat off after cooking, and like many rich dishes, the flavor deepens the next day.

Braised Lamb Shanks

1 Tablespoon  minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoon  salt
½  teaspoon  crushed dried savory or 1 teaspoon minced fresh savory
½  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
4 lamb shanks (about 12 ounces each)
1 teaspoon  olive oil
2 cups onion, chopped small (I chopped the onion and carrots in the food processor so they melted into the sauce)
1 cup carrots, chopped small
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups  dry red wine
3/4 cup  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
3/4 cup  fat-free, less-sodium beef broth

Trim every bit of visible fat from the lamb shanks.  Combine the first 4 ingredients, setting aside 1 teaspoon of the herb mixture. Rub lamb shanks all over with remaining herb mixture.  Spray a large pan or Dutch oven with cooking spray.  Add oil to pan and heat over medium heat. Add lamb to pan; cook 2 minutes on each side or until browned.  (I had to do them 2 at a time to fit them in the pan and give them room to brown.) Remove lamb from pan; keep warm.  Add onion, carrot, and garlic to pan; cook 5 minutes or until lightly browned and tender, stirring occasionally. Add wine and reserved 1 teaspoon herb mixture; bring to a boil. Cook until mixture is reduced to 2 cups (about 6 minutes). Add broths; bring to a boil. Cook until mixture is reduced to 1 3/4 cups (about 5 minutes). Return lamb to pan; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 2 1/2 hours or until lamb is tender, turning shanks occasionally. I had to add ½ cup of water to the lamb about half way through to keep the liquid from drying up and burning – so keep a careful eye on them, and check the liquid level when you turn the shanks.  When the shanks are done, remove them from the braising liquid.

Pour braising liquid into a container. Refrigerate lamb and braising liquid separately. When liquid has chilled and fat hardened on the surface, remove the fat and discard it. Reheat the shanks in the braising liquid.  Makes 4 servings at about 8 grams of fat/serving.  Serve over rice, noodles, or mashed potatoes.