1 lb ground lamb
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, coarse diced
1 green pepper, coarse diced
1 12 oz can diced tomato
1 6 oz can tomato paste
1 4 oz can sliced black olives (drained)
Juice of 1 lemon (and some zest)
2 tbl balsamic vinegar
Oregano to taste
Basil to taste
Garlic (as much as you like)
Brown meat, and strain (lamb is fairly fatty). Saute onions, peppers, mushrooms with light salt until they begin to soften. Return meat, add diced tomatoes, olives, juice from 1 lemon and a little lemon zest, balsamic, oregano, basil, garlic. Let cook on low heat until the flavors meld. Sauce should be slightly watery. Encorporate tomato paste about 5 minutes before serving. The sauce is rather chunky when it’s done… don’t panic… still good.
I serve this over Perciatelli (tube pasta that looks like a really fat spaghetti). Top with crumbled feta. If one person doesn’t like olives you can save them as a topping as well (I don’t actually like olives, but I think they add something to the sauce).
This also works nicely substituting shrimp and scallops for the lamb. Basically, you add them to the seafood to the sauce shortly before serving (10 minutes or so… it’s a guess) and let them cook in the sauce (cover the pot). When they’re done, it’s ready to serve.
Recipe courtesy of Mark. He says: Here’s the recipe…it’s an original. My greekish spaghetti. It started by my attempts to copy the Cellar's , but since their quality has gone downhill, and not knowing exactly what they do I started tweaking what I was doing and it has evolved into something beyond what inspired it. Some of the changes were on purpose… some on accident… but it’s pretty good I think.