Harissa lamb stew with chickpeas and kale

I seem to be obsessed with kale at the moment – we’ve been eating it in stews, as crisps and even drinking the stuff. I’m quite late to the party but now that I’ve arrived, I’m loving it! As well as kale, I love cooking leftovers and that’s how this recipe for harissa lamb stew started life; with a bag of kale, a jar of harissa paste and a mountain of roast lamb from an Easter weekend roast.

Among the thousand other jars in my fridge, I always have harissa paste. It’s kind of an essential for me, along with pesto, mayo and usually one of those plastic tubs of Thai green paste that blows your socks off if you use too much.

Roll back to a couple of weekends ago, we had dinner at Dave’s parent’s house. His mum had cooked a gorgeous roast dinner for Easter with a perfectly cooked and enormous leg of lamb. She sent us home with some leftover meat and the next night we were home late and needed something relatively quick to eat so I threw the lamb in with some passata, wilted spinach and harissa among other things… Turns out it was delicious and ready in around 30 minutes!

After a few tweaks (and another roast lamb dinner later) I think I’ve found the perfect mix. Although, having said all that, this harissa lamb stew would work perfectly without meat or with added vegetables in place of the lamb to make it vegetarian.

Ingredients: Serves 2

• Small onion, diced
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger, finely diced or grated
• A fat garlic clove, crushed
• 1/2 red pepper, cut into big dice
• 1 tbsp harissa paste
• 1 handful of kale, chopped
• A small tin of chickpeas (215g)
• 1/4 jar of passata (equivalent to approx 150ml)
• 1 handful of leftover lamb – cut into bitesize chunks.

Method:

• Fry the onion, garlic and ginger on a medium heat for a couple of minutes until soft but not browned.
• Stir in a tablespoon of harissa paste and allow it to cook for a few minutes, stirring into the onion mix. Add the red pepper.
• Pour in the passata (as much as you want but I’d recommend around 1/4 of one of those 680g bottles)
• Add in a handful of kale and the drained chickpeas. Stir them through (don’t worry, the kale will wilt down with the heat from the sauce).
• Finally, add the lamb, drop the heat right down and put a lid on the saucepan. Leave for around 15 minutes so that the kale is fully cooked and the lamb is heated through.