Friday Foodie Fix
This week’s Secret Ingredient for Friday Foodie Fix is Lamb. Lamb is a sheep that is less than 1 year old. Baby lamb would be 6-8 weeks, Spring lamb is 3-5 months and regular lamb under a year old. According to the Food Lover’s Guide, when purchasing lamb let the color be your guide. The darker the color, the older the animal. Baby lamb is pale pink while regular lamb is pinkish-red. If you purchase ground or small cuts they should be stored in the refrigerator loosely wrapped for up to 3 days and roasts up to 5 days. Also they can be frozen for 3 months for ground and up to 6 months for solid cuts.
Lamb Chops with Dried Cherries and Port Recipe from The Bitten Word
I don’t cook lamb mostly because the only lamb I’ve ever eaten and liked were New Zealand lamb chops I got from the cool place I worked in NYC, DeBragga & Spitler. They are fine meat purveyors to the white table cloth restaurants in the city and all over the world. Very cool job, always had a packed freezer. They even have a consumer branch of the company.
While searching on Flickr I came across this photo (click the pic for that recipe) from a blog I’ve mentioned before, The Bitten Word. Cool site you should check out. They’re not gluten free but they cook with great ingredients and a lot of the recipes they share are naturally gluten free. They basically make recipes from good food magazine. Great idea.
So how do you serve lamb? Do you have traditional recipes that you make over and over or are there some new ones? Share your recipes here and please be sure to link back to this post. Also, don’t forget to follow the links and see what others are cooking.
I wish I'd posted all of the lamb we've cooked in these past few months. Just never got around to it – shame on me! We bought a whole lamb from a nearby organic farm in December, and have been enjoying lamb chops, ground lamb, leg of lamb, roasts, etc. My favorite are the chops and the shanks. The shanks, I braise in wine, lemon and herbs. Melt in your mouth, fall off the bone yumminess. The chops? I season with salt, pepper, and chopped fresh rosemary, and sear in a cast iron skillet for about a minute on each side, and then place in a 400-degree oven for about 6 minutes. Done. Oh man, it's 7:30 AM and I'm drooling for lamb!
Alta- So next time you make lamb take some pics and share them!
My mother in law (who lives in England) makes the best lamb and she always makes her own mint sauce to go with it! I think she just mixes fresh mint leaves with vinegar…it is so delicious that I like to spoon the mint sauce over my mashed potatoes! I have had mint jelly before but really, her mint sauce is the best.
Kay- I've heard from everyone who makes their own mint sauce instead of mint jelly really raves about it. We'll have to get those recipes!
I'm planning on making a lamb recipe for the Easter Blogger Progressive Dinner Party! My recipe will appear on Wednesday!
Katrina- Yeah, can't wait to see it.
I love lamb …. this dish looks delicious