sour-sweet lamb yahni with black-eyed peas and almonds

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a Turkish dish, served with orzo pilav.

A bit more of an exploration of the Turquoise cookbook, which has so far yielded loads of unexpected pleasures.
The dish had strong echoes of the delicious north african dish of lamb and quince tagine, though the sour elements were stronger. Here the fruit is dried sour cherries -- which were wickedly expensive, even at the market at $60 a kg; I needed only about 1/2 a cup, but even that was a noticeable cost. They are truly delicious though. I had a bit more meat than I thought, so I ended up extending the dried fruit element by adding some dried cranberries. They weren't as quite as sweet as the cherries, but it worked. A surprising element was that a substantial part of the sauce was apple cider vinegar, which was balanced with honey. It was an interesting mix and the result gave a pleasing tartness under the sweet flavours. The black-eyed peas were delicious, cooked for so long in that sauce.

I've tried almost all the pilavs in Turquoise, they are all delicious and all wicked in some way. This has loads of butter. You cook the orzo pasta at the start in quite a lot of butter until the butter's all foamy and the pasta starts to brown, and then add the rice and stock. It looks good and tastes better.

And a bowl of new season brussels sprouts. I love them, so long as they aren't overcooked. They have to still be bright green.

dessert: strawberries and icecream. I know it's not the season for the berries, but the woman at the fruit stall I go to recommended them highly, and they were indeed sweet and delicious. I tried not to think of the travel distance they involved, since they must have come from Queensland ...