Grilled Lamb

When start your life you have no idea who will enter it or who will leave it. Honestly when you start off life as a baby the only things you're thinking about are; "I'm hungry," "There's no way I'm cleaning up the mess I just made in my diaper," and "I'm only going to retain, at the very most, blurry shapes from this period of my life, so why am I having such complex thoughts?" The point I'm eventually going to make is that sometimes in life you meet cool people and on rarer occasions you get to work with those people. 

That's what happened with this post. See that fancy looking ice cream up above? Well it just so happened Katy's good friend Michelle has a dessert blog, called More Chocolate! So, we decided it would be a great idea to work on a post together. 

We figured since it is summer that it's only natural that we should grill something. I decided to grill up some lamb and Michelle grilled up some peaches to go with her homemade vanilla ice cream, which you can find on her blog here. 

Grilled Lamb Chops with Peach Balsamic Sauce

Serves 3-4 people

• 1 rack of lamb or 8 chops

Marinade:

• 1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup Port
• 1 Lemon juiced
•  Fresh Thyme
• 1 teaspoon Olive Oil
• 1/2 cup Water
• 1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

1. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. If you purchased a rack of lamb because that's all the store had, slice the rack into chops. Add the chops to the marinade and let sit for 30 minutes in the fridge.
2. Fire up that grill. Once it's hot enough grill the chops for 3-5 minutes depending on the heat of your grill, then flip and cook the other side for 2 minutes or just long enough to get some grill marks on it. Plate and serve with this other stuff that's featured below, and not just because I took the time to write all of it out.

Peach Balsamic Sauce

• Balsamic Vinegar
• Peaches Peeled and diced
• Lemon Juice
• Lemon Zest
• Port
• Salt
• Pepper
• Flour

1. In a small sauce pan add everything listed except the flour and heat over high until it reaches a boil. Once the sauce reaches a boiling point reduce the heat to medium and let simmer for 20 minutes. Use a hand blender to pulverize those peach pieces into a sauce like consistency.
2. Stir in the flour and let the sauce thicken. Serve over the grilled lamb or really anything you want - lamb, burgers, ice cream, Cheetos.

Purple Cauliflower Basil Purée

• 1 head Purple Cauliflower
• 3 Tablespoons Greek Yogurt
• 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
• 5 large Fresh Basil Leaves shredded

1. Break the cauliflower head into pieces and remove the large steam. Steam the cauliflower for 7 minutes or until it's slightly soft. 
2. Drain the purple Kool-Aid-like water from the pan and add the yogurt, oil, salt and basil to the cauliflower. Use a food processor or a hand blender to blend into a paste-like consistency. Serve as a side.

Grilled Onion

• 1 large Onion peeled and halved
• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 2 pinches of Salt

1. Drizzle oil over onion.
2. Sprinkle salt over onion.
3. Grill for 15 min on side of grill where the coals aren't too hot.
4. Slice thinly.

All wood engraving depicting images of my food by Katy Weaver. And don't forget to check out Michelle's post for dessert! 

Lemon Bacon Shrimp Pasta with Chard

What to make for dinner? We've all found ourselves asking ourselves this question while only having the kitchen only be filled with leftover ingredients of meals past. That's exactly what happened with this dish. It was born out of hunger and the impatience of waiting for a pie to finish baking. Why, yes the pie is indeed going to be the next post. 

Everyone has that one food they can not stand, for me it's brussels sprouts, I know it's a bit cliché, but I don't even like them enough to find a recipe that makes them taste good enough to choke them down. A certain photographer's least favorite food, as weird as it sounds, is bacon, since we basically only had bacon, shrimp, and chard in the fridge, I tried concocting a dish that would hopefully appeal to the both of us.  Not to spoil the end result, but a dual appealing dish was not the result. 

I've thought about it and I'm not going to post the actual recipe on here, because it was sort of a throw a bunch of stuff in a pan and see how it turns out kind of dish. I will tell you what's actually in it, because I'm that nice. Even with just the listed ingredients you should be able to recreate it or creative something simliar of your own.

Lemon Bacon Shrimp Pasta with Chard

• Shrimp (16/20 size)
• Jowl bacon cut into tiny strips
• Lemon juice and zest
• Onion chopped
• Garlic minced
• White wine
• Angel hair pasta
• Chard chopped
• Basil out of jar (I know I'm ashamed of me too, but it was the only basil we had in the kitchen)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Goat cheese

Serves 4 small portions

Sometimes not using a recipe can be liberating, being able to free yourself from the shackles of Betty Crocker. Take this post as a challenge for the inner culinary explorer within you. See if you can take the inspiration and make it your own with what you have and hopefully make a dish that everyone will enjoy!

Photos by a non-bacon loving Katy Weaver

Citrus Breakfast

Having a grapefruit for breakfast every morning is a great way to shed some pounds, but it's pretty boring. Broiling the grapefruit make a boring breakfast staple into something fun, warm, and sweet.

Adding lemon berry pancakes to this breakfast was a natural choice. They complemented each other very nicely and I was able to zest part of the grapefruit for the pancakes.

Broiled Grapefruit

• 1 grapefruit
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

1. Cut the Grapefruit in half. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of brown sugar on the top of each grapefruit slice. 
2. Put into a small casserole dish and broil for 5 minutes or until the edges are slightly burnt. 

Adapted from this recipe.

Lemon Berry Pancakes

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of grapefruit zest (or lemon zest)
• 1 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup berries (thawed if frozen)

1. In a small bowl mix together all the wet ingredients including the zest. In a separate larger bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the dry ingredients and mix the wet ingredients into the flour mixture. Fold the berries into the batter. 
2. Scoop into desired sizes onto a griddle. Cook until both sides are golden brown. Serve with butter and powdered sugar. Or you can make a lemon yogurt sauce to go over the pan cakes.

Lemon Yogurt Sauce

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1.5 TBS lemon juice
• 1 TBS honey
• 1.5 TBS brown sugar

Mix and make to taste.

Combined these two make a citrus breakfast that won't leave you bitter. 

Photos by Katy Weaver

Lemon Lime Poppy Seed Muffins

I'll admit it, I basically took this recipe for lemon poppy seed muffins and changed a bunch of things about it. The first and obvious change was that I added lime to these muffins. There was only half of a lemon sitting in the fridge, so it was a good thing that there was a whole lime just waiting to be zested, cut open, and juiced.

The second change to the recipe was that I used plain yogurt instead of sour cream, which really brought out the tanginess of the lemon and lime. 

The last tweak I made to the recipe was that I used 1.5 tablespoons of poppy seeds instead of the 2 that the orignal recipe called for. You can add the full 2 tablespoons for poppy seeds if you want I can't stop you they're your muffins. I just didn't want to spend all day picking poppy seeds out of my teeth. 

Here is the copied recipe with a few my changes.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Yield: 12 muffins

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Bake Time: 18 to 20 minutes

• 2/3 cup sugar
• Grated zest and juice of ½ lemon and 1 lime
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup plain yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• ½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1½ tablespoons poppy seeds

1. Preheat your oven to 400. Grease your regular sized muffin pan with butter, spray or really any kind of lipid that you want coating your muffins. 
2. In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon/lime zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the smell of lemon and lime engulfs your kitchen. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl whisk the yogurt, eggs, vanilla, lemon and lime juices and melted butter together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and with a rubber spatula, gently stir to blend. DO NOT OVER STIR THE BATTER!  If you over stir the batter it'll result in tuff and chewy muffins. Lumpy batter is ideal. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffins cups.
3. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for a few minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Store leftovers (if there are any) in an airtight container at room temperature.

Then just crack a couple open with your morning coffee, slap on some butter and enjoy! I feel the lime and yogurt gives the muffins a more complex and tangy flavor that complements the poppy seeds. 

Photos by Katy Weaver