Greek-style lamb and pasta skillet (a from-scratch Hamburger Helper)

Here’s my latest recipe:  a lamb and pasta skillet dish.  This was inspired by a recipe we had at Easter with ground lamb; I hunted around online and found something vaguely similar, a recipe with Greek seasonings.  This came from the McCormick website, because it instructs you to use their seasonings, but I’m going to lay it out as I modified it.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground lamb

1/2 cup chopped onion

2 tsp. oregano leaves

1 tsp. ground connamon

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1 can (14 1/2 oz) diced tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp beef boullion

2 3/4 cups water

2 cups macaroni

1 – 2 cups fresh spinach (or however much you have in the fridge from the salad your husband likes)

3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Method:

Cook ground lamb and onion in large skillet on medium-high heat until meat is no longer pink.  Drain fat.  Add oregano, cinnamon, and garlic powder and mix well.

Stir in water, boullion, tomatoes, and tomato paste.  Bring to a boil.  Stir in pasta.  Reduce heat to medium; cover and cook 10 minutes.  Stir in spinach and 1/2 cup of feta.  Cook an additional 5 minutes.  (Check how much liquid is left and add more as needed.)

Sprinkle with remaining feta cheese, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes.

Comments:

Yes, I always use boullion (beef soup base) and water instead of buying cans of beef or chicken broth.  Also, oddly, the original recipe calls for ground beef instead of lamb but I really like the lamb here.  It’s not a strong lamb flavor but it’s nice.  And the recipe calls for frozen spinach which I might have done if my husband weren’t fond of salads with spinach.  It’s possible that there would be more liquid from the spinach if I had used frozen.

I’ve made this recipe twice, once with gemelli and once with macaroni; the gemelli took longer to cook but the water was about right and the macaroni cooked “on time” but needed more liquid.  The original recipe called for somewhat less pasta and liquids; I bumped it up just to boost the quantity of food a bit but didn’t apply that same slight tweak to the seasonings and I think it was still fine.

My kids inhaled this.