I am sorry for not being too active recently, but I couldn't leave you without an Easter post!
Today I would like to share with you a traditional Easter Bulgarian recipe and, in order to do so, I visited a lovely Bulgarian family that has moved to London few years ago.
This dish is composed by tender roasted lamb and a side of rice cooked in the oven with lamb liver.
Ingredients:
(I will use "Ts" for table spoons and "Th" for tea spoons)Lamb, 1Ts of flour, black pepper, 2 Ts of paprika, 2 Ts of tomato puree, olive oil, water, spring onion, salt, black pepper, cup of rice, 2 eggs, 200g of bulgarian yogurt, butter, Lamb liver, parsley and mint both fresh and dried.
We start with the main dish by preparing the herbs that we will use to season the lamb.
Chop a full bowl of fresh spring onions, parsley and mint. We also need some dried parsley and mint that we will use later.
For the seasoning we need a second bowl with flour(1Ts), salt(1Ts) ,black pepper(1Th), paprika(2Ts), tomato puree(2Ts), olive oil(3Ts) and mix to obtain a soft paste. If it's still too dry add a bit more olive oil and at the end mix everything with half cup of cold water to make it smooth: it must be as in the picture below.
In a roster tin make a layer with the chopped fresh herbs, using a bit less than half bowl.
Take the cuts of lamb that you choose to cook (for better result use pieces of meat of the same size), rub the meat all around with the soft paste and place it in the roster tin.
At this point pour a cup of water on the remaining soft paste, mix it and spread it over the lamb, add water to fill one third of the roaster.
Now we season with salt, pepper, dry herbs and another layer of fresh herbs (keep some for the rice dish). Cover everything with foil and cook in the oven at 200° for around an hour (depending on the tenderness and size of the meat). Turn the meat and cook in the same way for another hour.
While the lamb will be cooking we prepare the side.
Starting with boiling the lamb liver (you can also use kidney) in a tall pan, then remove the liver from the water (keep the water for later) and chop it into small pieces.
Fry the remaining fresh herbs in another pan, add half cup of water and after 5 min add the liver, a pinch of salt, black pepper, 100g of butter, dry herbs and stir for 2 minutes.
Then add 1 cup of rice, stir for another minute and pour into a casserole dish.
At this point add 3 cups of the water where we cooked the liver, make sure it's warm (this will accelerate the cooking process) and cook in the oven at 200° for 50 minutes.
In the meantime mix 2 eggs with: 200g of bulgarian yogurt, pinch of salt, black pepper, and a third of cup of water. Remove the rice from the oven when it's done.
Pour the egg mix on top of the rice.
Put it back in the oven until it will be nice and crusty as in the below picture.
So now the side is ready, we just need to wait for the lamb that will be like this picture.
The final touch will be some tomato slices and spring onion on the plate as a decoration for this combo recipe.
Hope you liked it! Enjoy your Easter and stay tuned for more recipes!
