On the heat. Mild

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg lamb, cubed or bone-in pieces
• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 3 onions, sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, sliced
• 3 red peppers, in strips
• 4 dried ñora or ancho chillies, soaked, flesh scraped
• 2 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
• 1 tsp hot smoked paprika
• 4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• 200 ml white wine · 2 bay leaves
• Salt, black pepper

Method

1. Brown the lamb very hard in the oil, in batches, until it is genuinely dark. Out.
2. Onions, garlic and peppers into the same oil on medium-low for 25 minutes until completely collapsed. Do not rush the peppers — they are the sauce.
3. Off the heat, stir in both paprikas and the scraped ñora flesh. Off the heat, or the paprika turns bitter in seconds.
4. Back on. Tomato in, cooked down 10 minutes. Wine in, reduced by half.
5. Lamb back in with the bay. Lid on, lowest heat, 90 minutes. Add no water at all — the peppers and onions release everything it needs.
6. Season at the end. Bread, and a plate of nothing else.

Cook's note. Paprika off the heat, always. It is the most commonly burned ingredient in Spanish cooking and it goes acrid at a temperature well below a simmer.

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