My new favourite lamb dish: so good you’ll want it every week

Do you fall into that trap of cooking something once, realising it was a bit of a hit and

endlessly repeating it until no one can stand the sight of it?

Well, prepare to add this week’s dishes to your repertoire. I can’t stop cooking them. They’ve become my new favourite thing and I’ve ended up cooking them week in, week out.

Right now, I am darned sure I could never get bored of either of these dishes, and even if I did, I’m confident their comfort factor will seduce me again at some point. And again. That’s because their core ingredients are always in my Top 10 List of Favourite Foods: lamb, chickpeas and aubergines.

These dishes are all about flavour. They wouldn’t win any prizes for their looks, but they taste oh so good. They are forgiving, too.

Lamb can be a bit . . . lamby, and when looking to add a bit of sharpness to this spiced mince dish, I got to offload some barberries that were sitting idle in the store cupboard.

“Barberries?” I hear you ask. I bought mine from one of the best little food stores – Roy Fox’s in Donnybrook – about a million years ago and they have been goading me to put them to good use ever since.

Needless to say, they hovered in the back, along with unused bottles of hot sauce bought on some holiday and a few more jars of foodie tat you usually end up collecting at Christmas.

But back to the dried barberries: they are rich in vitamin C, quite tart and used a lot in Iranian cooking. Other health benefits include anti-inflammatory properties and aiding digestion.

And last but not least, the flavour: when you want tart and sharp (as opposed to the sweetness of raisins or dried cherries), these are for you. In this dish they cut through all the creamy richness of blitzed aubergines and chickpeas, giving the lamb a touch of piquancy. But if you can’t get them, add in some raisins or currants and an extra squeeze of lemon juice. Sweeter, but still sharp.

The aubergine and chickpea “smash” that goes with it is a sort of “babammus” – a combination of baba ganoush and hummus. It sings with lemon, garlic and parsley and is you can taste the goodness as soon as you dig in.

This is food that’s good for the constitution and great for the soul.

domini@irishtimes.com Food cooked and styled by Domini Kemp & Gillian Fallon