Thursday, July 10, 2008

adventures in cooking lamb

So for those of you that know me as a tree hugging vegetarian... forget all that for now. I'm back on the carnivore bandwagon and it's treating me pretty well. Basically I love food so it was only a matter of time before this happened. The last time I 'broke' my vegetarianism it was for bacon. This time it was for a cheeseburger. Oh well.

Anyway this post is about lamb and all of it's wonderful goodness. Don't like lamb? Pshaw... yes you do. Well ok, maybe you do. We didn't think that we really cared much for lamb but then we discovered the awesomeness of lamb loin (another virtue of Trader Joe's) and we were converts.

Have you ever heard of Ming Tsai? If you care at all about cooking and food and celebrity chefs then you know who he is. Well he has a pretty great show on PBS called "Simply Ming" and that's what started us on the road to lamb lovin.

The recipe is for lamb satays that are served with a citrus mint dipping sauce. It's very simple to prepare and has wonderful flavor. We eat it as a protein for dinner with rice and a veggie but you could serve it as an appetizer and make out just as well.

First off a link to the recipe:
Peppered Lamb Satays with Citrus Mint Syrup


And now for a quick sidebar regarding the molcajete...


We got a nice molcajete as a wedding present and had been 100% intimidated by the seasoning directions that came with it:



That's a lot of committment for one cooking tool. I have sh*t to do.... I can't be seasoning molcajetes over the course of several days. So we didn't really follow all the steps but....
Grinding the rice:



and of course Fenix helped...


Grinding the salt:


And all I really wanted to do with the damn thing is grind up some whole peppercorns.... I shoulda just used the spice grinder :-/

Anyway back to the lamb. Here are some pics that we took to encourage and tantalize you:






4 comments:

Matt Lindgren, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist said...

I was looking at lamb at the store and wishing I knew what to do with it. timely post!
I so think Ming Tsai is hot.

Reese McG said...

yeah well truthfully i watch the show for his hotness. he makes great food too.

jay mcg said...

"ok, guys..."

-chef ming

seriously, how many times a show does he use that phrase?

:-)

Anonymous said...

you guys are gourmets! this looks great.

did you know that ming tsai has a child who has food allergies? his restaraunts are friendly to those of us with food allergies.

i especially like when he cooks "salmon".

i agree. very hot.