Şileya qeysî — Lamb with Apricots

Name: Şileya qeysî — Lamb with Apricots
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 115 min
Total time: 135 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 250 g dried apricots (ideally the tart ones from a Turkish or Persian shop); warm water for soaking, as needed; 800 g boneless lamb shoulder; 2 piece onions; 3 tbsp neutral vegetable oil; 1 piece cinnamon stick; 1 tsp salt; 0.5 tsp ground black pepper; 800 ml water; 1 tbsp sugar; 0.5 piece lemon (juice); white rice to serve, as needed (see recipe Birinc bi şehriye — White Rice with Toasted Vermicelli)

A Kurdish classic from Behdinan (Duhok) in northern Iraq: in Akre, where the apricot is part of the kitchen like hardly any other fruit, large pieces of lamb shoulder braise with onions, cinnamon and dried apricots until meat and fruit lie in a glossy, sweet-and-sour sauce. Similar dishes are known in Turkish as Kayısı yahnisi and in Persian as Khoresh-e Gheysi. Unlike Qelî bi qeysî — lamb confit with rice and apricot sauce, where the meat is confited in its own fat and the sauce is cooked separately, here the lamb and apricots cook together in one pot, and a squeeze of lemon keeps the sweetness fresh.

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Cook time

135 min

🍽️

Servings

🧂

Ingredients

View Original ↗

Nutrition

per serving

764 kcal

Calories

37 g

Protein

49 g

Fat

42 g

Carbs

Ingredients

For 4 servings

Instructions

1
Cover the apricots with warm water in a bowl and leave to soak until they have plumped up a little and softened.
2
Meanwhile, pat the lamb dry, trim off any thick fat and cut the meat into pieces of about 4 cm. Peel and halve the onions and cut them into thin strips.
3
Heat the oil in a heavy pot and brown the lamb well on all sides; if space is tight, do this in two batches so that the meat fries rather than stews.
4
Add the onions and fry, stirring, until soft and golden brown.
5
Add the cinnamon stick, salt, pepper and water and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and braise the lamb over a low heat until almost tender.
6
Drain the apricots and fold them into the meat with the sugar. Continue braising without the lid over a low heat until the apricots are very soft but still whole and the sauce thickens to a syrupy consistency; stir gently now and then.
7
Remove the cinnamon stick and stir in the lemon juice. Season with salt until the sweetness and acidity are in balance; if the sauce is too thick, add a splash of hot water.
8
Cut a piece of lamb open: it must be tender, cooked through and easy to pull apart with a fork; if not, braise for a few more minutes. Pile the white rice onto a platter and arrange the lamb with the apricots and sauce on top.
9
Tip: A handful of raisins or a few stoned prunes make the dish even more festive, and instead of lamb you can use beef shoulder, which braises for about 20 minutes longer. The dish is easy to cook the day before, as the apricots soak up even more flavour overnight. Cool leftover rice quickly, put it in the fridge within two hours at the latest and use it up within a day.