For the third recipe of The Gourmet Club series I turned once again to La Varenne Pratique for inspiration. And continuation! The reason why I made French Tomato Sauce was so I could use it for this recipe. You could of course just use a regular can of tomato sauce instead but it worked so well in this recipe, I do recommend making it from scratch if you can. You can watch the video here.
The Recipe
Trim 1 large fennel bulb and slice into 1/4″ slices. Cook in a pan of boiling salted water for 10 minutes.
You will need chopped parsley, 3 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tbsp ground coriander and 2 cups of tomato sauce.
You will need 1 lb of ground lamb. I could not find it ground anywhere so I ground it myself.
Heat some olive oil in a hot pan and add 1 lb ground lamb, 3 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tbsp ground coriander and season with salt and pepper.
Add the 2 cups of French tomato sauce and some parsley.
Add half to a buttered baking dish, then the fennel and top with rest of lamb sauce.
Cover with foil and cook in a preheated 350F oven for 40 minutes.
Damn!!!!
Foodie Results
Sprinkle with a little extra parsley and fall in love! Wow, you can hardly tell that is fennel in there, it gets so nice and soft and subtle. The lamb is strong and plays centre stage with the coriander giving it aromatic personality. The tomato sauce is neutral but ties everything together. Absolutely genius!
Bastardized Version
In order to get more bang for my foodie buck I bastardized the gourmet meal by adding macaroni thus creating… Lambaroni! Luscious and lovely, absolutely delicious.
You can watch the short video lesson here.
Or just my taste testing here. I made everything from scratch and it turned out fantastic. Oh my mom would be so proud!
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That DOES look amazing, Suzie! And I like your lambatoni version too, LOL.
Thanks Debra!!! 🙂 It was awesome and fun to bastardize it too, LOL.