Lovely lamb chops with cheesy bacon mashed potatoes

I just had this meal not one hour ago, and it was delicious. Prep time was minimal. If you are a lamb lover, this is the only marinade you will ever need. I heartily suggest you drink a robust red wine with this meal.

These recipes make enough for about two servings, but can easily be doubled. I've found that you don't want to over-marinate the lamb, so 30 minutes or less will do fine. Prep time on this is minimal, but it is delicious. Not the fanciest of meals, but it will satisfy any lamb lover, and the mashed potatoes taste almost like cheesy potato skins.

Lovely Lamb chops with cheesy bacon mashed potatoes
Bottled lemon juice is fine here, but fresh garlic and fresh herbs are a must.

8 lamb rib chops, French cut style
salt and pepper
1/4 cup oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves garlic
2 sprigs thyme, oregano, or your favorite herb

Trim the lamb of excess fat if needed. Place chops on baking sheet. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper.
In a small bowl, add oil and lemon juice. Crush garlic cloves and add. Strip the leaves off the herb springs, and add to marinade. It's OK if a few small stems get in.

Pour marinade over chops, directly on baking sheet. Turn after 10-15 minutes. Make sure to spoon some of the herbs and garlic on the chops when you turn them.

Meanwhile, while the chops are marinating, make the potatoes.

1 cup instant mashed potatoes
1 Tablespoon butter or oil
2 Tablespoons Bacon Salt
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 an onion
1/4 cup cheese
1 cup water
1/4 cup milk
scallions and cheddar for garnish (optional)

Chop onion to medium dice. Add to medium-sized saucepan with oil and salt. Cook until onion is translucent and fairly soft, stirring occasionally, over medium heat, about 10 minutes.

While onions are cooking, start to broil the lamb chops. Broil about 2-3 inches away from the broiler. For rare chops, broil 3 minutes per side. 4 minutes per side for medium. Remove from the oven and let rest.

Add bacon salt and stir to combine. Add water, stir, turn heat to high until mixture begins to boil. Turn off heat, add milk and potatoes. Stir until the mixture begins to solidify, then add cheese.

Serve 4 chops per person with the potatoes on the side. Drink with a robust red wine. Feel like a cannibal as you gnaw the lamb bones.

My Big Fat Greek Dinner

On Monday, I made dinner for my mom, in celebration of her birthday. The three-course Greek meal was a huge success, and one of the best meals I've ever made. Though there were a few things I would have done a little differently, here are the highlights of the menu.

Appetizer: Flaming kasseri chese, aka Saganaki, aka OPA! aka "Oh my God the food's on fire!" This is quite a common dish in greek restaurants. It's showy, with big, bright flames, and hey, who doesn't like melty cheese on bread. This was amazingly easy to do. I just dredged some kasseri cheese in flour, pan-fried it in some butter until it was all melty, removed from the heat, added the Grand Marnier, lit it, yelled OPA!(yes, this is a required step. It's much like yelling "FORE!" when playing golf), and doused the flames with a squeeze of lemon.

This was just as good as you get in a restaurant. The hardest part was finding the kasseri cheese. Next time, I would use only 2 tablespoons of butter, and use a non-stick pan.

Main course: Lamb rib chops marinated overnight in olive oil, lemon, oregano, and garlic. I broiled these to medium-rare. They were super-tasty, little morsels of savory goodness.

Lamb rib chops are hard to find, so I just took a rack of lamb and cut it into rib chops. I also learned not to be afraid of trimming excess fat and gristle off a piece of meat. Even though it was technically "wasteful," it made the meat much easier to eat, and much more tender. Next time, I would use a ratio of 2 parts oil to one part lemon juice--the chops were a little too tangy. I would still add at least head, if not a head and a half, of chopped garlic.

Side dishes: Brown rice with lentils, and greek salad. For the rice, I more or less improved, and it came out great. I fried up a chopped onion with some oil, oregano and cumin, then added chicken broth and a half cup of lentils. I let that cook for a while, then added some more broth and some instant brown rice. Very tasty, and the lentils were a nice texture contrast in the rice.

The greek salad used romaine lettuce as its base, then I added a chopped tomato, some thinly sliced onion, some good Kalmata olives, and a lot of feta cheese. I served a tangy greek dressing on the side.

Dessert: Walnut and pistachio baklava with vanilla ice cream. I've worked with filo dough enough to know that the super-fancy desserts are best left to the pros. Both of these items were store-bought. The baklava straight from the local greek restaurant. Greek yogurt would have been more traditional here, but it was a birthday party, after all.

Wine: Two different wines, both procured by my dad were served with dinner. A Greek white wine, and a Spanish red wine. The white was very wierd. It was very piney. Not bad, per se, but it didn't go terribly well with the cheese, and it took some getting used to. The red, on the other hand, was wonderful. Nothing too complex, but it was smooth, spicy, and meshed really well with the lamb. I promise to do a separate wine writeup sometime soon, with the names of the bottles and all.

The meal was great, not just because of the taste, but because it was easy to do, I could do much of the hard work in advance, and it was thematically consistent.