I love lamb. Inspired by Lambfest ’11, when cooking for my roommates this week, I decided lamb was indubitably going to be on the menu. I come from a family of great cooks, so I have always loved good food and cooking. Home-cooked meals have always been a relative normality in my apartments, and why not, when cooking can often be just as easy as trekking down the block to Raising Cane’s? (Which by the way, when done properly, can be pretty darn delicious in its own right, my first impressions about that place were way off.)
For the lamb, I couldn’t open the tin of the rub that I picked up at Lambfest, so I just concocted my own with some of my favorite herbs and spices. I cook with a lot of rosemary so I added some (read: a lot) of rosemary. (ALWAYS. ALWAYS ROSEMARY. ROSEMARY CHICKEN. ROSEMARY POTATOES. ROSEMARY CHOCOLATE CAKE. ROSEMARY’S THE BEST BEST BEST!) Though I detest the licorice taste of fennel, fennel seed is my ABSOLUTE favorite, and I love it in sausage and on some meats. With the richness and heartiness of the lamb, fennel seed is perfection. I finished the chops off with some garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper, (the usual), and popped them into the broiler until they were done!
I have always loved radiatore pasta, and whoever claims that all pasta tastes the same: never eat pasta again. You are not worthy. Radiatore pasta tastes better than all others; wagon wheels come in a close second. The supermarket on BU’s campus does not carry enough radiatore variety, and I had to settle on some weirdo veggie brand of radiatore pasta that apparently gives you like 19 full servings of vegetables? It just tasted like pasta. Doused in pesto and parmesan, obviously. My roommates last year all loved parmesan cheese almost as much as I do, and it was a running joke that we were “parmesan people” because we would go through 5 containers of the store-bought cheese every 2 weeks. (I actually don’t think that’s such an exaggeration.)
Spinach is one of my favorite veggies, and it’s so easy to prepare! I hate how you buy a whole package thinking it’s this monstrous amount of green and then when it’s sautéed there’s enough for maybe 1.5 portions. Spinach is all water so it shrivels quick and magically disappears in the pan, but I love sautéed spinach in a pan with some olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, salt, and a tiny squirt of lemon for some zest.
The meal was the perfect satisfaction for my extended lamb cravings, and the indulgence was a simple, practical meal on a Sunday night. #DELISH
ValenTEA Party 