Lamb Pilaff

As my time at home rapidly approaches an end, I appreciate more than ever quite how scrumptious home cooking can be and, when one is elbow deep in daily tasks and getting things done, how incredible the interruption of a proper, home-cooked lunch can be. The world of working away from home will be a strange thing when I go back to it, I tell you. Sandwiches? Eh, wot? Pret a Manger?!? Nah, guv, not fer me thanks. I've got my hot, straight-from-the-cooker Lamb Pilaff. And that, girls and boys, is what I am going to talk to you about today.

It's going to be a bit of a 'cobbled together' recipe, as is my way - as it was all a bit handful of this, dash of that, etc etc. But 'twas too scrumptious not to share.

Ingredients

1 clove garlic, chopped
1 small onion, diced
1-2 small sticks celery, finely diced
2 cupfuls long-grain rice
1 lamb stock cube
spices: cinnamon, 2-3 cloves
handful each of almonds or cashew nuts, sultanas/raisins, chopped apricots
1/2 small onion, sliced thinly
2-3 handfuls of roughly chopped leftover lamb (from a Sunday lunch)

Method
1. Sweat garlic, onions and celery in a pan with some butter and olive oil, when golden add the rice and stir, covering the rice grains.
2. Crumble in the lamb stock, and add enough water to just cover the rice grains. Stir, and continue to stir until most liquid is absorbed. The rice should be a dark yellow colour (as a result of the lamb stock).
3. Add in the spices, dried fruit and nuts and chopped cooked lamb, stirring in, and allowing most of the remaining liquid to cook off.
4. Serve with chopped parsley scattered.

Really good warming lunch, mmm, making my tum rumble as I write in fact.