Easy & Fancy Rack of Lamb for Two

On Sundays, especially in the winter, I like to put a little extra effort into dinner.  This often means I'll roast a chicken or some beef, or occasionally make a stew.  I've been wanting to make lamb for a while but it is generally so large and expensive when I see it in stores.  Finally I found a nice little rack of lamb for about seventeen dollars.  It was frozen, but only weighed 500g so it took no time at all to thaw.

I found this recipe on the awesome Epicurious for rack of lamb for two. I love it when the portion size is just what I need - no math!

I sliced up the potatoes:

... and shallots:

... and made a paste of garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper:

(I miraculously still have rosemary and thyme growing/living in my garden. I'm wondering how much longer it will last.)

I heated some oil in my cast iron pan.

Then browned the lamb for a few minutes.

Once it was nice and brown I removed it from the pan, drained the oil and browned the potatoes and shallots for a few minutes.  I had too many potatoes, so they didn't brown as much as I would have liked.  The shallots, however, browned more than enough.

Once this was done, I added some herb mixture and water to the potatoes and then topped them with the lamb.  Then I spread the remaining herb mixture over the lamb...

... and popped the whole thing in the oven.

The recipe called for roasted tomatoes as well, but we are not fans of that nonsense.  I roasted the lamb and potatoes for 20 minutes and then pulled out the lamb for testing.  The thermometer said 140 exactly so I let it rest and tossed the potatoes back in to try to get them more browned. 

I steamed some yellow beans while the lamb rested. 

I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but when I sliced the lamb, I was over the moon!

Absolutely perfectly cooked!  

Beautiful!

I served it up with yellow beans and lots of potatoes.

Cooking the lamb on top of the potatoes gave them such incredible flavour. They may be the best potatoes I've ever had. I barely missed the crispy exterior.  

This dinner was amazing. Especially considering the amount of effort it took. It is perfect for a Sunday dinner or special occasion, but easy and quick enough for a weeknight. If only lamb was on sale all the time!

Enjoy!

*Pictures updated in 2016

Short & Sweet Sunday

Why not have a theme day?  This week I've done a few in depth photo series of meals and I plan to have some more detailed posts next week, but here's a little taste of what we ate this week, with limited commentary.  


Grilled Pork, Sage Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes, Lentils and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

This was a tasty meal.  The weather was unseasonably mild and we found some nice boneless sirloin pork chops at Costco.  We grilled them up and I made some roasted brussels sprouts on the side.  I just roast them with salt, pepper and garlic powder for about 30 minutes.  


I also added this sprouted lentil blend I found for something a little healthy.  But the real star of the dish was the potatoes.  I don't normally mix regular potatoes and sweet potatoes, and when I roast either one, I generally use lots of spices, but this time I kept it very simple...


Just potatoes, sweet potatoes, olive oil, salt and fresh sage.  I roasted them for 40 minutes and tossed them around a couple of times.  They were so delicious!

This dish really showed off the differences between sweet potatoes and regular potatoes.  The sage seemed to make the sweet potatoes taste sweeter.  

But it gave the potatoes this awesome herbal savory flavour.  I loved them both but I think the potatoes had a slight edge because they were so golden and crispy!


Happy weekend!  Looking forward to an exciting new week of food and pictures!

Simple Seafood Pasta for New Years

My husband's birthday is on December 30th, so to make up for decades of conflation with Christmas and New Years, we always celebrate on the 30th and have a quiet night in on the 31st. Often we are suffering from too much cheer the night before, but this year we had a little pep left in us, so I planned a simple seafood pasta dinner.  (I say I planned because due to a late lunch I didn't end up executing it until dinner the next day.)  It is a very, very easy recipe, based on this one from Epicurious, but the seafood makes it a little fancy and you can use just about any seafood you like.  

Aside from the seafood, you need olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, white wine, tomato sauce, parsley and linguine.  

I used bay scallops, large raw shrimp (not jumbo) and a couple of small lobster tails this time.  I've made it with just shrimp and scallops; calamari, shrimp and scallops; even mussels or clams with the shrimp and scallops.  

Boil your water and add your linguine to the pot. I add lots and lots of salt.  Like 2 tablespoons.

If you chop the garlic and shell the seafood before you put the pasta in the water, the sauce and seafood will be done by the time the pasta is cooked.  

Saute the garlic in the olive oil with the chili flakes.  

After a minute or two, add the wine.  If you're using clams or mussels, add them now.  Otherwise let the wine cook for a minute or two and add the tomato sauce.  

Simmer for another minute or two and add the seafood about 4 minutes before the pasta is done.  Let it simmer lightly until the shrimp is pink and the scallops are opaque.  

Once the linguine is done, drain it and add it to the large pan with the seafood and sauce.  Toss with the parsley and serve it up!

This recipe is so quick and easy it surprises me every time.  It is delicious and a little fancy too.  So you can have it on a special occasion like New Years Eve, or get tipsy and snacky and forget about it until New Years Day, or just have it on some random Tuesday night.  

Food Lessons Learned:

• Not much this time since this is a tried and true recipe, but I guess don't plan a semi-fancy dinner then have a huge lunch at 4pm, then start drinking. Because the chances of making even a simple recipe get pretty slim by that point

Photography Lessons Learned:

• First, don't balance your box of linguine against your glass of wine for the cast photo. That's just asking for trouble
• Also, it isn't so easy to take pictures of all the steps, especially with a quickie recipe like this
• Finally, I figured out how to re-size the photos so hopefully that'll save some time.