The most delicious lamb with blue cheese, dates and spinach

Sweet, salty and juicy all at once, this dish is simple to prepare and goes well with a salad and fluffy roasted potatoes. Make sure you have toothpicks on hand before you start.

A brief note on cheese: I don't encourage eating a lot of dairy foods because...

• milk products can be hard to digest for many people
• milk products often contain traces of antibiotics, which impact our gut, immune and mental health (antibiotics are given to commercial dairy cows), and
• processes like pasteurization kill beneficial bacteria in milk that would help us digest it.

Furthermore, too much dairy in the diet can promote inflammation in the body. And then there are the ethical issues around how cows are treated in dairy farming.

So for these reasons, cheese, yoghurt and ice cream are foods I enjoy in moderation - a couple of times a month (or less) and on special occasions. I also recommend choosing organic dairy foods, to avoid antibiotics and support farmers who maintain higher standards of animal welfare.

Now, back to the lamb recipe. Lamb is an excellent source of protein, zinc, iron and vitamin B12. It's a super food for anyone affected by stress, anxiety or depression.

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Prep time 10 mins (add an extra 45 mins if roasting potatoes and making a salad - spuds will need to go into a hot oven about 20 minutes before the lamb)
Olive oil for cooking
200g of boneless lamb steaks per person (ideally, these will be cut fairly thin - Countdown and Pak n Save in NZ often sell lamb steaks like this)
Big handful of organic spinach leaves
2-3 dates per person
100g of blue cheese (this would be enough for 5 or 6 people, so you will have cheese left over if preparing this dish for fewer people)
Packet of toothpicks (crucial!)

-Heat the oven to around 190-degrees Celsius and allow the meat to come to room temperature on the bench.
-Drizzle some olive oil over the base of a large, ceramic or Pyrex oven dish.
-Roughly chop a few dates per person and rinse a large handful of spinach leaves and drain.
-Crumble up a few good chunks of blue cheese and combine in a bowl with the chopped dates.
-Lay the lamb steaks out on a chopping board and lay a spinach leaf on each steak.
-Spoon a teaspoon or two of the date and blue cheese mix onto the centre of each spinach leaf.
-With toothpicks at the ready, roll up each lamb steak so the spinach, dates and blue cheese are on the inside, and secure with a tooth pick.
-Once you have done this for all the steaks, pop them in the oven dish, and bake for 10-12 mins. Serve with salad and roast spuds.

Enjoy!
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