Thursday 25 August 2011

Cave girl lamb chops

Sainsbury's had a 3 for £10 meat deal and I bought a rump steak, and big pack of beef mince and a pack of lamb chops to pay forward on a week when I wasn't actually using a lot of meat in my menu plan anyway, and had space in my freezer.
I find if I alternate like that, I spend less money, and I cook half the week from stocks in the fridge or freezer, and half the week with fresh ingredients - be they veg or fresh meat or non-veg alternatives to meat. Obviously we have staples meals too - daals, beans, pastas, rice meals, which need minimal fresh things added to pep them up.

So yesterday I decided to use the lamb chops to do something different for the girls, because the one pots and pastas and so on can get repetitive.

In the afternoon, I marinaded the chops in the juice of a lemon, a defrosted stick of minced garlic and some rosemary from the garden, plus salt and pepper.

Later I diced up 3 largeish squds and microwaved them for 5 minutes in my microwave "pressure cooker" while heating up my saute pan with some dripping. Yes dripping. Once the microwave beeped, I drained the dice and tipped them gingerly into the hot dripping, no, I didn't add ginger!
Spread them out and gave them a chance to sizzle before stirring them gently around to coat all over. I then seasoned the pan and lidded it and left it to cook on a slightly lower flame.

Now I lined my grill pan with foil and preheated it, then placed my lamb chops under the grill on a nice high flame, with the garlic and rosemary still on top.

Once the potatoes were done, about 10 mins, I could tip them into a bowl and then gently place the lamb chops onto the hot fat. This way the top and bottom of the chop get nice and crispy without the garlic burning and going bitter, or getting smeared away.

I also grabbed some tenderstem brocolli and steamed that, and these elements were a very well received supper!
The girls llike most of the meat chopped into pieces off the bone, mainly to help cool it down, but also cos Big'Un still has chewing issues. Littl'Un LOVES gnawing a bone, and this time, we managed to show Big'Un how to do this effectively and she really enjoyed herself!
Will definitely do this again, with MORE chops, as I had to stop Littl'Un from dispatching the last chop which was for Papa when he came in a few minutes later...

The sautes and tenderstem were equally well received, incidentally...

2 comments:

  1. Was v Yum. Glad you stopped lil'un eating the last chop. Lol

    papa.

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  2. gonna try this, girls love lamb chops, nice new method!

    ReplyDelete