Mediterranean-Style Lamb Ragú Salad

Isn’t it amazing what you can do with a beautiful piece of meat and a few key ingredients?

Take a whole neck of lamb, add some tomatoes, a bit of stock, garlic & lemon, stick it in a pot, wait a while – and presto – you have a wonderful, flavourful dish! {Or something to that extent… Here’s the real recipe below:}

You will need:

1 whole neck of lamb on the bone {roughly 1 kg}
Fine salt
White pepper
1 lemon
2 tsp tomato paste
1/2 a head of garlic
1 cup of chicken stock
1 can of chopped tomatoes {check the ingredients that you get only pure chopped tomatoes, without any other additives}
2 tbs pine nuts
Olive oil
Salad leaves & fresh sweet basil to serve

*This needs to cook for a total of 5 hours, so don’t attempt this at 4pm – just saying…
**You could use a slow-cooker, but I wanted to test out my new Wonderbag, plus, you just cannot beat the flavours from browning & cooking your meat in a cast-iron pot…

All right – let’s do this!

Start by squeezing the lemon juice all over the neck of lamb, getting all the sides.
Season liberally with salt and a sprinkle of white pepper, all around.
Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in your pot and brown the meat on all sides.

Add the tomato paste, chopped tomatoes and stock.

Rub the garlic over the meat and stuff a few cloves inside. {You can make little incisions into the meat and just pop the clove inside.}
Place the rest of the garlic in the pot.

Take the squeezed-out lemons, as well as the pine nuts and add those to the pot too.

Cover with the lid and cook for 3 hours {in the oven} at 160C.

This is where the Wonderbag fits in:

After 3 hrs in the oven, place the entire pot into the Wonderbag and let it slowly continue to cook for another 2 hrs.

{I haven’t yet cooked something entirely with the Wonderbag – stay tuned for that one!}

I am quite impressed, because it continues to cook something that’s been brought to the boil and needs to cook slowly. So – it’s really ideal for stews, soups and the likes.
It also keeps the dish warm for hours – saving you tons of electricity!

Go and check out their website – it’s quite genius.
{I am not at all sponsored, or anything, by Wonderbag, I just think it’s a great tool.}

Now, once you’ve cooked your beautiful piece of lamb’s neck, pull the meat off the bone and shred into small bits. {It’s so juicy and just comes off the bone like magic.}

Mix the shredded meat back into the tomato sauce.

To serve {it should still be warm} – mix in handfuls of fresh sweet basil leaves and place it on a bed of mixed baby salad leaves {butter lettuce, lambs lettuce and watercress – my favourite mix!}

If there’s any leftovers, you can have it with some cauli mash, add it to an omelette, a quiche or just enjoy it again as a salad.

Yum! X