I absolutely love lamb chops, and my wife won’t touch them with a barge-pole.

Specifically, roast lamb chops with mint sauce (or more easy to come by here in the USA, mint jelly).

With Mrs. Seeker off to see her folks with Seeker Jr. for a short holiday, that has left me to my own culinary devices, which I shall say, are relatively few.

The flip side to this, is that it allows me free reign to experiment, and experiment I did:

I did up some lamb chops in a “best-guess” recipe that hopefully, kills two birds with one stone - namely, to tone down the “gamey” taste of lamb and avoid using that obnoxiously green mint jelly (which I rather like, but I’ve long been on the run from artificial food colours - especially ones that give a most unnatural pallor to the foods in question).

To wit, most derivatives of mint - in its natural state - runs from clear to a pale gold colour.

I’ll touch on that again in a bit.

Here’s what you’ll need for the lamb chops:

1½ — 2 pounds of lamb chops
1 cup of mint leaves, finely minced/crushed *OR* 1 — 1½ cups of highly concentrated (pepper)mint tea
¼ cup of white vinegar
1 sprig of parsley
2 cloves of garlic, shredded
1 pinch of dried chives
½ teaspoon of sugar
a dash of ground pepper

About the peppermint tea: I had on hand a large quantity of peppermint tea concentrate which I had prepared the other day (peppermint tea is very refreshing on a hot summer’s day, and I make it in bulk) - at least a gallon’s worth of concentrate with which I can make about 4 or 5 gallons of tea with. To make a gallon of this concentrate, I use a little more than a gallon of filtered water (allowing for some water loss to boiling) and four or five large teabags full of peppermint tea, boiled for about 10 minutes and steeped for about an two hours to produce a concentrate about the colour of cola.

If all that tea is not your bag (heh)… you can also simply get about a cup of mint leaves at the grocer’s and crush it up in a food processor, or mince it up with a good kitchen knife.

Take your minced/crushed mint (or peppermint concentrate) and add to it the vinegar, the sugar, chives, and shredded cloves of garlic, and a dash of ground pepper.

Take your lamb cutlets/chops and stab them vigorously with a fork, and then place it into the bowl with the (pepper)mint marinade, for about thirty minutes to an hour. It seems that the longer the lamb marinades, the less “gamey” the lamb is likely to taste.

Now off with you to make the mashed potatoes (or steak potatoes go just as nicely) and your vegetable of choice (I used string beans in the meal pictured above, for the lack of fuss-factor).

1) Preheat your oven to 350°F with a Pyrex/glass pan or suitable substitute (I find that the Pyrex pas clean up easier than most other pans, although if your REALLY like to “cheat”, you could slap down a layer of aluminium foil on top of the pan)
2) Oil up a skillet and warm over high heat
3) Sear both sides for about 1min. each side of each cutlet/chop
4) Bake the seared chops/cutlets for about 30min for each inch of thickness (for about 1½ pounds of cutlets at about 1-inch thickness, this should result in a medium to medium-well finish for approx. 3 servings)
5) Serve with the ’smashed taters and veggies, garnish with parsley…

Your mileage may vary with this depending upon the cuts and thickness of the chops you get - this recipe seems to have turned out quite well with the cuts you see pictured above.

And the beauty is I did not need to buy any of that scary-leprechaun green mint jelly: there was a definite subtle mint flavour sealed in with the lamb, and though not as “lamb-gamey” as I normally like it, it means it will likely pass muster with Mrs. Seeker when she gets back from her holiday trip.

Been a while since I did a segment on food, but last night I stumbled upon (and modified) a few recipes that turned out particularly well.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera handy as we were in a hurry to eat… so if I make this again in the near future, I promise to snap a few piccies of the finished product.

Red Hot Pepper Steak:

• 2ea. steak portions, preferably ¾lbs. - 1lbs. each of a higher quality cut with prime or better quality marbling.
• 4 Tbsp. of butter (half a stick)
• cooking oil
• ¼ cup of unbleached wheat flour (you may want to use upwards of a ½ cup, but anything more than that and you’ll be throwing away more flour than you’ll use)
• ¼ tsp. ground black pepper
• 2 medium size cloves of garlic
• ¼ cup of Holland House Marsala wine
• ¼ cup of cooking sherry
• ¼ tsp. ground chili pepper or hot pepper
• ¼ tsp. paprika
• ¼ tsp. sea salt
• dash of oregano
• 1-2 thin (¼”) slices of fresh lemon
• ½ red pepper
• 1 fresh basil leaf (or about 2-4 Tbsp. of dried minced basil)
• 4 oz. Baby Bella (Crimini) mushrooms, thinly sliced (¼” or thinner)

And:

1ea. 16 oz. Tupperware container/re-used large Cool-Whip container or something similar…

To start with, dice up or crush the two peeled garlic cloves and add into a small mixing bowl with the sherry and the Marsala wine. Mince the basil if needed, and add that to the garlic/wine mix. Set aside for later.

Take the steaks, and trim off any large glops of fat and set those aside for the soup (discussed later).

In the Tupperware or similar container, mix in the unbleached wheat flour, salt, pepper, chili pepper or hot pepper, paprika, and oregano; seal the lid of the container and shake thoroughly to mix this stuff evenly. I prefer to use a resealable container because it seems to work better for me and is cheaper (and more carbon-friendly/oil-saving, for those of you who care about that sort of thing) and besides all that, I find it a lot easier to pick up meat from inside the box than fumbling around with a plastic shaking bag, to say nothing of the clean up later on.

You make wish to cut the meat up into smaller portions here depending upon the number of folks you’ll be serving; otherwise, drop each large piece into the “shaking box” and shake accrodingly. The steaks should be lightly coated on all sides when done, though you may need to dredge the sides if the cuts are particularly thick.

Set the coated steaks aside, or just leave them in the box for now.

At this point, you may want to start preparing the onions for the French Onion soup - slicing one large white or green onion into ¼” slices or thinner across the grain. You may find it easier to bisect the onion longitudinally (with the grain) once to give yourself a flat surface to brace the onion halves for faster, accurate slicing.

As long as you got the knife out, slice up the red pepper half into ¼” slices as well. along with the mushrooms and the 1-2 lemon slices, and the butter. Set all these aside for now, except for the butter, lemon and oil:

Coat the bottom of a large skillet with oil (you don’t need a lot, just enough to barely coat the bottom) and melt the butter over low heat, allowing the molten butter to “bubble out”. Squeeze the lemon slices into the butter and add them in for a little extra “zing”.

Once the butter has melted and become more or less indistinguishable from the oil, add the steaks and cook over medium heat for about 8-10 min. per side. After the first 8-10min. flip, add in the mushrooms, and the wine/garlic mix, making sure to scatter the mushrooms in between the steaks… add the red peppers on top of the steaks and cover for the last five minutes

French Onion Soup

The soup is a bit easier ingredients-wise:

• 1 large green or white onion, sliced thin (¼”slices)
• ¼ cooking oil
• 2 Tbsp. brown sugar
• ¼ tsp. ground black pepper
• 1 quart box of “Pacific Coast French Soup Base” (if you want to cheat a little, otherwise: )
• 4 cups of beef broth
• 2-4 slices of hard-crust bread (French bread preferably) or ½ cup of large croûtons
• ½ of shredded swiss or mozzarella cheese
• Optional: Any glops of beef fat trimmed from the steaks

Put the oil, onion slices, brown sugar, and pepper in a pot on medium heat; stirring often until the onions are caramelized. Add beef fat glops if desired. This should take about 15-20 min.

Add broth/soup base, and bring to a boil on high heat.

Set oven rack to closely accommodate 2-4 oven-proof soup bowls; ladle soup into bowls to about ¾ capacity, float the bread or (croûtons) topped with the shredded cheese for 3-5 minutes or until cheese is evenly melted and bubbly.

Enjoy with glasses of a nice red wine, perhaps a Merlot or Shiraz, or perhaps a cranberry & seltzer cocktail.

Ah, the Fourth of July. Hamburgers, hot dogs, other peoples’ children scurrying underfoot, and of course, fireworks.

We paid a visit to our friends in NYC (after carefully weighing the costs and conveniences of which mode of travel was best: by round-trip train/misc. public transit for about $50 USD inclusive, or for about three hours of driving through hellish traffic for about $40 USD in gasoline and bridge tolls - we chose the trains! ) and after successfully aggravating a very ill-tempered server at a Chinese shabu-shabu restaraunt, we enjoyed the Macy’s Independence Day fireworks show from atop said friends’ apartment.

Not altogether bad, aside from the following object lessons: 

1) Never go into a restaraunt that employs wait staff that lacks any ability to speak English in any capacity, or one that almost exclusively serves a non-English speaking customer base (of course, being in Chinatown might have been a bit of a giveaway, but thus far… most Chinatown restaraunts I have patronised have always had someone semi-fluent in English on hand. Of course, if you are actually in a foreign country, it behooves one to at least learn some of thier language or bring along a friend who speaks it).

2) Generally, it is a good idea to avoid bad-tempered servers who publicly curse you and your party out without even the pretense of trying to conceal yourself from view (say, like going into the kitchen and hawking a loogie on our food, instead of slamming on our table in disgust.)  

3) Also, realizing that pointing out to your server the fact that he has misunderstood your order, and  that plate of pork you ordered is in fact, your pork…

… and by having to physically blockade him from the kitchen in order to recover your plate of pork just might provoke him to anger. For that matter, I am still convinced that we did not get our proper servings.

4) Implying to that grouchy server that because we were paying his tip/wage for the next hour, that it would be a good idea for him to at least try a little harder to get everyone’s orders straight without throwing a temper tantrum. Unfortunately, this was not well received either.

Needless to say, the management heard an earful from yours truly about this rather unpleasant - and subsequently untipped - server. Although, I am not quite certain that the management understood me very well either.

5) I had wanted to eat some Korean BBQ, but a combination of market forces and popular opinion overruled my desire for flame-kissed Asian-flavoured swine flesh. However, I have determined to never, ever again listen to a suggestion to eat shabu-shabu (a primarily Japanese entreé) prepared in a Chinese eatery on the premise that it is "cheap and good". Now don’t get me wrong, I love Chinese cuisine. But leave the shabu-shabu to the Japanese (or the Koreans, they have a local variation of it).

Gripes about the restaraunt aside, the food wasn’t actually bad at all… but the utterly lacking service.

If I wanted to be treated like a schmuck by the wait staff, I’d pay for it and go to some snobby French place and hear the waiter’s insults in English or a reasonably intelligible patois. 

The rest of the night went well, and discovered that my wife’s friend’s husband has a recent interest in something I’ve taken a passing interest in as well - golf. I mean, it is about the only exercise I get for several hours at a stretch lately.

(There is also mowing the lawn, but we are talking about fun things to do here.) So I might be inviting him up for a round or three in the near future.

We wrapped up the night to news (of North Korean missile launches), dodging roving bands of Italian football (soccer) enthusiasts regaling in thier team’s victory over Germany (es tut mir sehr Leit…) and the acrid stench of fireworks exhaust wafting over the breeze that broke up the mugginess of the evening. And of course, just arriving to board the last Metro-North train out of Manhattan by the slimmest of margins… resulting in one very long ride (the last train is a local train that hits every little podunk stop on the line).

But that’s all good. We had the train more or less to ourselves and could rack out on the triple-seater chairs for the duration. 

I had originally planned this segment to be in the next podcast I am working on… and nearly filled up a drive partion blabbering on about the dinner I made. I still need to refine said podcast, and will probably post it later tonight… unfortunately, the only decent pic I got was of the drink. I brutally over-exposed the fish… so you’ll just have to believe when (much to our mutual surprise) I say it came out quite good.

But first, let’s have a drink: 

Seeker’s Sake Slammer, Strawberry mode:

• 10-12 strawberries (green leafy stuff removed)
• 8oz. (230ml) of plain yogurt
• one tray of ice cubes (just the ice, please)
• about 4tbsp. (60g) of sugar - and yes, ladies… this will go straight to your hips… so substitute with Splenda if so desired.
• about 2 cups of whole milk (460ml)
• 4oz. (120ml) of drinking sake (I tapped into my unending supply of New Year’s Sake from various Japanese friends of mine).

Top with whipped cream and share with your loved one(s). Starbuck’s sizing aside, there should be enough for about three "vente" or two "tall" servings.

It’s pretty tasty (in my opinion, and won’t fatten you up to quickly…) and relatively easy to make.

And here is the skinny on the fishy.

Ordinarily, I am "not allowed" in the kitchen, as I am very capable of vile, heinous acts against foods and cookingware, like burning a pot of boiling water to a crisp for example; yet while the cat’s away, Seeker will play. In the kitchen, that is!

The ingredients:

• 2x slabs of fresh salmon fillet (approx. 8-10oz. or about 230-300g per slab)
• 2 strips of bacon
• 1 whole lemon, thinly sliced (you will need at least 8 thin slices, about 1~1.5cm thick (half inch)
• 1 scallion stalk at least 8" (20cm) long…, cut thinly at a cross-section from leaf to bulb
• 4-6 oz. (120-170g) of "cooking" sake (I used regular drinking sake, shoot me!)
• 2 thinly sliced Shishitou peppers (or any long, moderately sweet frying pepper, like Nardello)
• a pinch of tumeric, and copious amounts of salt and black pepper
• 2-3 sprigs of cilantro, chopped finely. Or just buy the dried spice cilantro (about 4tsp. or 20g)
• 10-12 "Yukon Gold" or "Red" potatoes (these are the "golf-ball" size potatoes) quartered once and halfed again; or slice’em in cross section. I find the halfed quarters easier to work in the skillet.
• 6oz. (or 170g) of sliced mushroom caps
• plenty of extra virgin olive oil.

The Prep:

The night before you make this, defrost (if needed) the salmon… and wrap each slab in a slice of bacon. Insert two lemon slices under the "bacon belt" on each flat side of the fish. This is very important for the cooking later on.

Soak (the fish/bacon/lemon wrap) in a marinade of the sake, scallion and pepper choppings along with whatever lemon juice you might have accumulated from slicing the lemon; squeeze out any unused lemon. Season liberally with salt, pepper and cilantro. Cover it over and let it soak all day while you are at work or running about your daily routine.

When ready to cook… 

Fry up the chopped potatoes and mushrooms together in oil with salt, pepper, and the pinch of tumeric. That’s the easy part, and takes about 5-8 minutes on strong-medium heat. The fish takes a bit longer, and should be done on no more than medium heat - this will avoid scorching cokkware and hopefully save time on the cleanup. Set this aside on low heat, or bowl it up and nuke it for 30sec. just before serving.

Remember those lemon slices you stuck under the bacon belt? They do more than just look pretty and add flavor. They also serve as a "lift" to keep the fish from contacting the skillet surface (and creating a sticky, icky mess). The bacon fat will also help cook the fish, and help keep adequate lubrication in the skillet as well as adding a lovely aroma that will help balance the fish-cooking smell some folks loathe. 

It takes about 15-20 minutes to cook through (depending upon the thickness of the slabs) and only need flipping once. Apply salt and pepper again to taste. Keep covered and it will cook nicely in its own juices.