Category: Cooking

Chop, chop

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Lamb chops
New dishes stretch the brain, sometimes to the breaking point.

Yesterday Herself got a hankering for lamb chops, something I never cook, so I cast around online for a recipe, hit the Whole Paycheck and got busy.

Turns out it’s pretty simple stuff — season four loin chops with paprika, salt and pepper, brown ’em in olive oil, add some halved shallots and stuff the whole mess into the oven at 400 for a few minutes.

Plate the lamb, then add some quartered plum tomatoes, kalamata olives and flat-leaf parsley to the skillet, toss, and serve it up alongside some wild rice and seared Brussels sprouts. Fast fast fast. A glass or two of Chateau du Cengele Côtes de Provence 2006 and you’re good to go.

I slightly undercooked the Brussels sprouts, but you can’t have everything. Not at Chez Dog, anyway. The chef de cuisine is as short-tempered as he is inept.

A fairytale of Bibleburg

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
¡Que bueno!
Careful, señores ... hot plate! Er, uh, hot bowl!

Given the nature of our impending Christmas Day feast — a quantity absurd of dead bird, with spuds, stuffing, etc. — I thought tonight’s meal should be something less, um, burly.

Hence, a Spanish vegetable soup with chickpeas and chard from Martha Rose Shulman’s “Recipes for Health.” You don’t need a salad with this bad boy because it is a salad — a hot, wet one full of tomatoes, chickpeas, garlic, onion, carrots, turnips, cabbage, Swiss chard and flat-leaf parsley.

A Spanish soup calls for a Spanish wine, thus the 2009 Penelope Sanchez.

Meanwhile, Herself has already made our Christmas dessert, a raspberry cobbler. If I showed it to you now, you wouldn’t have any appetite left for dinner. First vegetables, then dessert.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Herself and I have a date to dance to “Fairytale of New York.” Y’all dance with the one what brung ye, and we’ll see you tomorrow.