Your Best Recipe with Citrus & Olives

The roster of ingredients includes: cilantro, lemon, green olives, pecorino, tomato, smoked paprika, cinnamon, onion, flour, white wine, fennel and garlic.  

Prepping the veggies.  

You dredge the chicken pieces in flour mixed with pecorino, which gives the browned chicken a lovely crisp crust.  

Our trusted flour measuring technique: the dump and smooth.  

We use whole lemon quarters, but if yours have a lot of pith, you may want to use just the juice.  

Notice our matching outfits? Unplanned.  

A little smoked paprika goes into the dredging mixture, and then more goes into the sauce.  

Amanda is always generous with the ground pepper, which the rest of us love!  

See the shreds of pecorino in there? They're about to work their magic on the chicken.  

Look at that gorgeous brown skin!  

The lemons, onion, fennel, olives and the rest of the paprika go into the pot to soften and meld.  

An occasional stir helps the veggies cook down more evenly.  

And in about 10 minutes, they look like this!  

A bit of flour to thicken the sauce a little...  

Then we added the tomatoes and white wine, followed by the lemon zest. We recommend adding a healthy pinch or two of salt at this point, but taste first!  

Amanda just said something funny. Little devil.  

The lineup: green olives, onion, butternut squash, lamb shoulder, garlic, prunes, lemon zest, paprika (we used sweet), cinnamon, coriander, cumin and turmeric.  

We left this beautiful bunch of parsley not only out of the ingredient shot, but out of the final dish as well. D'oh!  

Unbundling the lamb shoulder to cube it.  

We trimmed some of the fat, but not all, for more flavor.  

We cut our squash into 3/4-inch cubes. If you're opposed to the squash starting to fall apart as it stews, you might want to go for slightly bigger cubes. We didn't mind!  

Again, the sadly neglected parsley makes an appearance.  

The spice mixture for the lamb.  

Amanda tosses the lamb with the spices -- it's a nice, healthy coating.  

We kept the heat moderate, as we didn't want the spices to burn. Over a medium flame, the lamb browned nicely and fairly quickly.  

Just chillin'.  

You're just looking for a nice brown crust.  

You just missed a very exciting moment: Amanda swept all of the sliced onion and garlic from the counter into the hot pan, in one fell swoop.  

After the onions have softened, the lamb goes back into the pan with the chicken stock.  

Then the beautiful squash...  

Followed by the prunes, olives and lemon zest.  

Then, you just stir everything together, cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, and that's it!