Our menu tonight is...Lamb chops with fresh herbs, Dolmas with cucumber sauce, Fresh tomato and corn salad and crusty bread with Black Truffle butter.
We will start by making out herb mixture...this will generally go in everything to carry our flavors through all the dishes.
Take leaves of fresh mint, basil and thyme and chop finely. Chop about 1 or 2 cloves of garlic. keep aside.
mix herbs (keep some thyme to the side for the tomato salad.)
Make a cup of rice (2c. water, boil, add 1c. jasmine rice turn to low and cook about 20 min.) I added about 1t. white truffle oil and a bit of kosher salt to the water before boiling.
Boil 2 or 3 ears of fresh corn, not until mush either, you want fresh crisp veggies!
Lets make our Dolmas! Saute garlic in a bit of extra virgin olive oil, Brown 1/2 lb. fresh ground lamb to the raw meat you will add kosher salt and pepper, Cayenne pepper, allspice, cinnamon and lemon zest. (maybe 1/2t. of each)
Now to your rice you will add 1/2 the fresh herb mixture and the meat mixture. Wrap in a single grape leaf. Take a spoonful of the rice into your hand and shape into a football shape. set in center of leaf and fold sides in to cover then roll up. Steam 20 minutes.
Now is a good time to season your lamb with salt, pepper, garlic powder and the some of the fresh herb mixture.
On to the Tzatziki sauce. Take 2 small containers of Greek honey yogurt add a bit of garlic and remainder of fresh herb mix and finely chopped cucumber, salt and pepper. Whisk until smooth.
Fresh cut the cooled corn (don't cut too deep into cob and don't scrape cob either we want no mush and please be careful!)
cut 3 tomatoes in half and quarter each half. slice a shallot and mix in. dash some Balsamic vinegar and top with saved Thyme. Move to the refrigerator until time to serve.
Cooking the lamb is easy. use 3T. unsalted butter and 1/4c. olive oil. Use the olive oil to retain the heat but still get that good butter flavor. Fry med. high temp for 4 minutes on each side. Ask the butcher to keep all the chops cut at the same thickness for better cooking.
I get my Black Truffle butter from a specialty market down south. You may can find it on the Internet or if you happen to be able to go to Whole Foods, I HIGHLY recommend it...
I've simply sliced a loaf of bread on a bias and lightly buttered the bread with the truffle butter.
(this was 10 bucks for 1/2oz. of this butter, So keep an eye on it!)
No comments:
Post a Comment