Spicy lamb bake

Last week I won a baking dish from a competition promoting minced lamb, so although it has a multitude of uses, it would have been rude not to include minced lamb on its first outing, wouldn't it?

Minced lamb always makes me think of Bobotie, the spicy South African dish that looks like a moussaka, tastes like a curry and feels like a meatloaf, so I dug out a   recipe for it. But it used raisins and flaked almonds, and I happened to fancy apricots and pistachios, so I played around with the ingredients and ended up with something that definitely wasn't Bobotie - the taste was  much closer to a Northern African dish, but still with the Bobotie texture.

Here's the recipe:

500g minced lamb

1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
25 g butter
1 tbs white wine vinegar
1 tbs mild curry powder
1 tsp dried oregano
75g ready-to-eat dried apricots, roughly chopped
50g shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
Juice of ½ lemon
seasoning
2 slices white bread
250 ml milk
2 eggs

Tear the bread into chunks  and soak in the milk for about half an hour.

 Preheat the oven to 160 C, gas mark 3.

 Chop the onion and fry gently in the butter until sort and golden, adding the garlic when it is almost cooked. Cool slightly.

Squeeze the milk out of the bread, reserving it for later.

Mix together the lamb, onion and garlic, vinegar, curry powder, oregano, apricots, pistachios, lemon juice, seasoning, one of the eggs, beaten, and the bread. Pat into a medium sized ovenproof dish, smoothing the top.

Beat together the milk left from soaking the bread and the remaining egg. Pour over the lamb, then bake for around 1 hour until the meat is cooked and the top is golden.

The leftovers were delicious  cold the next day, with salad and chutney