The Christening of the Crock Pot: Lebanese Lamb Stew with labne & za'atar

Behold my new gadget. The crock pot. This is a 6qt size crock pot & personally I feel like if you happen to be feeding a family of 8 and spend much of your day hyperventilating & cleaning up after your kids unsuccessful attempts to water-paint with milk on the floor you will most likely squeal for joy much like I did upon it's arrival.

One nice thing about it is you can take out the inside crockery & put it directly on the table to serve. It also came with it's handy dandy little feature that I like to call "the probe factor"

Observe the probe. It's a little thermometer thingie to check the temperature of what's cooking. And of course in case you didn't know how to "probe"-- on the lid there's this little clarification.....

Japlish is fun but there's nothing like good ol' straightforward english.

In my eagerness to try it out I made a Lebanese lamb stew on probably one of the hottest days of the year so far. Started it out around 11 in the morning & set the timer & temperature. And yes I did insert the probe.

I was happy with the recipe. The ingrediants were simple & though I was a little suspicious about the amount of cinnamon it called for in the long run it seemed to blend in quite well. It was a full flavored stew, served it with plain rice (1/2 brown) but I have to admit in our as yet, non-airconed dining room it was a rather foolish idea & we ended up sweating it out in a self-inflicted sauna, yet somehow no one could stop themselves & we nearly finished the whole thing.

I also threw together a little batch of labne (Lebanese cheese) I didn't have time to make it overnight but let it set for about 6 hours, hense a rather thinner than normal result.

A few spoonfuls of olive oil & a few spoonfuls of za'atar. Which is a stunning lovely mixture of spices and I'm quite serious when I say I could eat it by the spoonful.

Finished product.
The DH sure seemed to love this stuff though he couldn't ever manage to say it right --- so cute!

All in all, I'm really happy about the crockpot but probably won't be using it often (besides perhaps sphagetti sauce) till autumn.