ottawa foodies

After my delicious sandwich at Murray St., I decided to make this at home. I found a Holzman recipe that was great but a little on the sweet side. I was wondering if the sweetness overrides the lamb because of the subtle flavour of the local lamb that I used? New Zealand lamb seems to have a stronger flavour so maybe it's more like the American lamb the recipe called for. Any suggestions or recipes more on the savoury side?

I recently had a lamb roast with friends and was left with a whole bunch of left over roast lamb still attached to bones. I pressure cooked this in Creemore, then removed all the fat/flesh from the bones and diced it.

From here you could do the same thing with ground lamb or stewing cubes, you may have to adjust your approach accordingly.

I then cribbed an idea from a few different recipes in a Rick Bayless cookbook as follows:

Sauteed lots of diced onions, carrots and garlic in rendered lamb fat. Added cumin, coriander, annatto, mexican oregano, bay, thyme, oregano, rehydrated dried ancho pepper. Added one can of tomato paste then deglazed with stock/beer from pressure cooker. Added a handful of green raisins (i'd say this is optional but it works) and then simmered until carrots were soft. Added the diced meat, heated everything through so that it was basically lamb chili.

It was delicious at this point, and would have made great filling for tacos, empanadas or a sloppy joe - I did something atypical for me, roasted a pumpkin, pureed the flesh and the layered the pumpkin puree on top of the meat mixture to make a hybrid shepherd's pie - similar to a dish I ate one time in the Dominican Republic. It went over well with a not particularly adventurous crowd.