Cumin Lamb & Scallion Stir Fry


I gravitate towards stir frys a lot when I have tons of onions at home. Makes it easy to use them all up while still providing lots of veggies per serving (to counter heavier sauces that I tend to use for stir frys). As much as I love soy sauce and fish sauce, they do cause bloating and I try to limit my use of it. I try and drink plenty of water afterwards to offset it but it doesn't always work. Oh well, at least I still get a good (& relatively healthy) meal out of it.


This stir fry uses a LOT of cumin. I have not normally seen cumin being used outside of Indian subcontinent & Middle Eastern cuisines. So it came as a surprise that north-western Chinese cuisine has a cumin heavy lamb stir fry when I saw this recipe first. Cumin certainly does go well with lamb, so it's definitely a good pairing. Add lots of sweet onions to the mixture, and it's a well balanced stir fry that has umami from the sauce with tender pieces of lamb, sweetness from the onions and sharpness from the cumin and szechuan peppers. Oh yeah, there's szechuan peppers in this too :) The peppers tend to affect me more compared to my husband. My tongue goes numb and remains tingly for hours afterwards. The first time I had szechuan peppers, my tongue had a little spot that was tingly for two days!
It's worth seeking out szechuan for this new taste experience if you haven't ever had it before.


Recipe adapted from Dinner: Changing The Game, Melissa Clark
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 tbsp cumin seeds
2 tsp szechuan peppercorns
1 tsp ground cumin
scant 1/2 tsp sea salt
8 dried red chiles
1 lb boneless leg of lamb, cut into thin flat strips, 1 1/2 to 2" long
3 fat garlic cloves, minced
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 large yellow/white onion, cut into thick slices
2 bunches scallions, cut into 2" pieces
2 cups fresh cilantro leaves & tender stems


Procedure:
Toast the cumin seeds and szechuan peppercorn in a wide pan that you can stir fry in. Once toasted, let it cool and coarsely grind it in a spice grinder. Add ground cumin, salt and dried red chiles and toss this with the lamb strips in a medium bowl and set aside. Mix garlic, soy sauce and miring in a separate bowl and set aside.
Heat oil in the same wide pan on high for a couple minutes (just under smoking) and add onion slices and cook for about 30 seconds without moving. Add the scallions and cook without tossing too much so they can brown and char a little bit in places. Do this until all the onions are crisp tender and have a nice color on them. Take them out on a plate and add the lamb mixture with chiles into the pan and cook, tossing frequently, till the lamb is brown on all sides. The pan bottom will start to look like hell at this point but don't worry, there's sauce coming to the rescue. Add the garlic sauce mixture and cook on medium till it's mostly absorbed. Make sure you are scraping the pan bottom with a wide edged wooden spoon to get all the caramelized stuff off the bottom. Add back the onions and toss till heated. Take it off heat and scatter cilantro and serve with steamed rice.


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