Lamb is good

Well, I'm feeling a lot better than I did last night, and the food we ate today improved accordingly.

I made Nigella's caesar salad, roast lamb racks with mint, orange and redcurrant jelly, roasted garlic and shallots, and grilled asparagus.

381. Caesar salad (Dinner)
382. Roasted garlic and shallots (Dinner)
383. Mint, orange and redcurrant jelly (Weekend Lunch)

Nigella's Caesar salad is different from what I'm used to - there is no bacon or anchovies, the eggs are muushed up into the dressing instead of poached and separate, and she uses potato croutons.

The croutons are made in exactly the same was as the cubed potatoes I made on Thursday. You chop them up, and roast them for an hour in a dish with garlic and oil.

While they were cooking, I made the shallots and garlic. You peel the shallots and bake them for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, you boil some garlic cloves, then peel them, and add them to the oven with the shallots for the last 20 minutes of cooking. (This was done, again, in the microwave convection oven living in my pantry).

Next I made the mint, orange and redcurrant jelly, by stirring some freshly chopped mint and orange zest into some store-bought redcurrant jam.

By this stage the potato croutons were ready, so I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool while I put the lamb racks in (30 minutes at 220C). I put in a tray of asparagus towards the end of cooking time.

To finish off the salad, I had to tear up some cos lettuce leaves, and toss through olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, parmesan cheese and 2 eggs which have been boiled for exactly 1 minute. (This means they're just cooked, but still very liquid). This mixture of ingredients forms a thick, sharp and tasty dressing. All that remained was to add the potato croutons, and lunch was ready...


lamb racks, asparagus and mustard


roasted garlic and shallots


table


closeup of caesar salad


mint and redcurrant jelly

It was a fantastic lunch. The unmarinated lamb (bought from Rendinas, as usual), was tender and tasty, and the redcurrant jelly was a great accompaniment. We all loved the Caesar salad, especially my Dad who thought the croutons were deelicious. The only thing we didn't love were the shallots and garlic - even though they'd had their garlicky-oniony acridness cooked out of them, they were still a bit too hardcore for our palates.