Thursday, April 9, 2015

Three-Cheese Scalloped Potates

Scalloped Potatoes with New Potatoes
Update on Eileen's Scalloped Potatoes Post from a couple of years ago (Christmas Dinner):

I just made these potatoes with new baby potatoes. I sliced them thinly and layered with the sliced onion, cheese, flour, butter, salt & pepper as directed.

I used the cheese I had in the house, so mine was a combination of parmesan, cheddar and creamy toscana. It came out perfectly!

I am just sharing this to encourage you to play around with the recipe as much as want, or with what ingredients you have on hand. This recipe is wonderful and really versatile. 
Enjoy!

Glorious Grilled Lamb Chops

Glorious Grilled Lamb Chop. Yum.

As we always did at home growing up, I still tend to serve ham or lamb (or both, depending on the size of the crowd) for Easter. For one of the first times I can ever remember, this Easter it was just George, myself and the kids. We were traveling earlier in the week and had a few friends over for an Easter egg hunt and brunch on Saturday, so we decided to keep Sunday really simple and low-key, and it was wonderful!


Ingredients for lamb chop marinade.
We decided to go with grilled lamb chops for our entree. I haven't done lamb chops a lot, and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them. I did know that I didn't really want to run to the store, so I wanted to just go with what I had in the house. I looked at a few recipes, and didn't have everything for any of them, so I decided to take pieces of a few and put them together. 
In then end, I mixed up a little marinade/paste of:
  • the juice from half a lemon 
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic 
  • 4-5 tablespoons dijon mustard 
  • 1-2 tablespoon anchovy paste 
  • and a little olive oil
Seriously, so easy. And so good.
Can't wait to grill these up.
Some of it I just eyeballed until it looked like a consistency I'd like. I rubbed this onto two frenched racks of lamb chops (about 2 lbs total) and refrigerated for a few hours. 

I took the chops out and brought to room temperature before grilling.

We (George) played around a little with the grilling technique. Overall, he grilled the chops about 20 minutes total, mostly over indirect heat. (A little note: For medium lamb, I read that when touching, it should feel like the tip of your nose. It was perfectly cooked!) Before taking them off the grill, he seared them on each side for a beautiful color. They were fantastic.

Halfway through the meal, Holland and George asked me to please write down what I did so we could have these again. (Here you go, Holland and George.)

Perhaps the highest praise of all, however, was when my 7 year old animal lover (who was not happy that we were eating little lambs) reached for her second chop. "I really don't like the idea of eating baby lambs," she said, "but this is delicious."

And that, my friends, is the story of our glorious grilled Easter lamb chops.