5:30 Challenge: easy lamb stew with couscous

Once March rolls around, I get antsy for spring cooking. But even though I’m itching to get outside and grill, the month usually brings enough dreary weather to merit a few more soups and stews.

This particular lamb, tomato and spinach stew, flavored with fragrant berbere spice and kalamata olives, is an excellent dish to transition from winter to spring. The bright acidity of the tomatoes keeps the stew lively, while the spinach adds color and vibrancy. The lamb is plenty rich and rib-sticking, but it also, like the month of March itself, hints at springtime.

As with any quick, meat-filled stew, you’ll want to use ground lamb for this recipe. You needn’t worry about cooking the lamb long enough to turn tender it as you would stew meat — several minutes is really all that you need — and you can break it up into large pieces, or crumble it completely into the sauce.

But before you even think about adding the lamb to the pan, you’ll need to address the spice blend. Berbere is a spice blend from Ethiopia, and while it can contain a multitude of ingredients, it typically contains a mix of warm spices and heat from dried chiles. Berbere used to be challenging to track down, but these days, you can find it at Kroger. Spice levels vary from brand to brand, so it is worth tasting before cooking with it; adjust the amount you use to your taste. I like to take the time to bloom the berbere before doing anything else; heat olive oil in a skillet until shimmering, add the spice mixture to the hot oil and cook, stirring constantly, until its fragrance fills the room. Then you can add the lamb.

From there, the process is simple: cook the meat until no longer pink, add olives and a large can of tomatoes, which I prefer to crush into large chunks with my hands, then let the stew simmer away until the tomatoes taste more like lamb and berbere than the can from which they came. Finally, stir in a full five-ounce package of baby spinach, handful by handful, until it wilts into the sauce. It never looks like all of the spinach will fit, but it always does.

Serve the stew over a bed of couscous, alongside a pot of orzo pasta, or simply with good bread to sop up all of the juices.