Agnello in agrodolce (sweet and sour lamb)

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Agnello in agrodolce, simmering

Agnello in agrodolce, the ingredents

Eastern influences can be found in all agrodolce recipes, not least, this lamb dish.

This is a delightful recipe, but don't expect it to be the same as the bright orange Chinese version that you may be familiar with!

Ingredients

• 1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 5 tablespoons of olive oil
• 5 tablespoons full cream milk
• 3 tablespoons tomato purée
• 1 kg (2 lb) lamb shoulder, cut into bite-sized cubes
• 125 ml high quality white wine vinegar
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 6 fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

Method

1. Fry the onions in half of the olive oil until golden brown and reserve.
2. Meanwhile, mix the milk and tomato paste together.
3. Brown the lamb in the remaining oil.
4. Season the meat with a little salt, add the onions back to the pan and pour in the tomato mixture. I added just a few tablespoons of water at this stage as it looked as though it would not survive an hour of simmering.
5. Simmer gently for about an hour.
6. After an hour, add the vinegar, sugar and a good grind of black pepper then cook for the final 15 minutes.
7. Chop the basil and add just before serving.

Variations

Try this with duck or rabbit.

Chef's notes

Making this for 2 people, I used 350g of lamb shoulder fillet, but kept the remaining ingredients the same. I reduced the simmering time to 30 minutes as it was nice tender fillet.

Serving suggestions

While plain boiled rice is probably the thing to serve with this, it went really well with spaghetti.

See also

• Sweet and sour recipes