Lamb - Italian Stew and Spicy Indian Cubes

I never liked lamb. It was one of the first dishes I tried when I started out learning to cook --- in fact, out of Hazan. Surprising, now that I think about it, that it failed --- I think it's the only dish out of Hazan that didn't work for me. It was her lamb stew. I had to go to the kitchen to look up the recipe again, since her book is in the kitchen since I use it regularly. But I haven't looked at this recipe since 2002 or so. So now I see that the reason I chose it was because it had so few ingredients:

Lamb Stew with Vinegar and Green Beans

1 pound fresh green beans, 1/4C olio, 3 pounds (!) lamb shoulder with bone cut into 2" cubes, 1/2C chopped onion, salt, pepper, 1/2C red wine vinegar.

Cut the ends of the beans, heat the oil, brown the lamb, take it out, cook the onion 'til it's golden, put back the lamb, add the salt, pepper and vinegar, boil vinegar for 30 sec while stirring. Add the beans, cover, and simmer for 1.5 hours (!). Add water if necessary.

I might try it again, I remember working on it as when I was a Ph.D. student, I was excited, I decided to learn to cook and decided on learning out of Hazan's Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Pepin's Techniques. But I remember that I didn't read the recipe through, I didn't know it would take 2 hours, I'd never prepared green beans. I was working with 3 pounds of smelly lamb! And after all that, when I tasted this lamb stew, it was too gamy. So I avoided cooking lamb since then, though I probably ate it occasionally in North Indian restaurants.

The only time I enjoyed lamb was when this chef visited a friend of ours and made lamb-burgers with mint. They were excellent.

But then I came across Jaffrey's excellent Indian lamb cubes.

Spicy Indian Lamb Cubes

3 tablespoon oil, 1.5" ginger, 4cl fine chopped garlic, 15 curry leaves if you can find them, 1# lamb 1" cubes, 2 teaspoon garam masala, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, .25 teaspoon turmeric, .25 teaspoon pepper, 1 gr chopped chili, .5 teaspoon salt, black pepper, 1.5-2 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat oil in a pan at medium-high. Add ginger, garlic, curry, and stir. Add lamb, cut the heat to medium low. Add the garam masala, ground cumin, turmeric, pepper, chili, salt. Add .75C water, cover the pan, and simmer gently 50min. Then add black pepper, lemon juice and serve it forth.

And they are spicy, not gamy, and delicious.