Easter Expanded

Easter.  Even though this holiday is generally supposed to be about a really important dude emerging from 3 days of death in his tomb, we generally associate it with adorable fluffy things like little chicks or bunnies or lambs.  Mmmmmm.  Lamb.  The former vegetarian in me cringes to think of eating cute 4-legged things, but the current carnivore in me usually succeeds in shushing that former self and getting on with picking out a nice wine pairing.

(Jen: if you're reading this, I apologize.  For the purposes of this post, let's pretend it was a fluffy little texturized-soy-protein lamb that we ate…)

Apparently I wasn't the only person in this town to make such a logic leap from "fluffy Easter animals" to "yummy rack of lamb."  I called New Sagaya approximately 30 minutes after they sold their last fresh rack of lamb on Saturday.  Mr. Prime Beef had frozen packages of 4.  My heart was set on rack of lamb, so I went for it.  I planned to thaw one and vacuum pack the rest, keeping them frozen for another time.  Unfortunately, my zealousness had me leaving my engineering logic in the dust.  It is impossible to pry frozen racks of lamb apart while leaving them even moderately intact.  Trying to thaw them a bit to "loosen" them up is a silly idea because they tend to follow the laws of physics and heat transfer, thawing from the outside in, thus never reaching the fully fused internal sections.  So I thawed it all out and had enough servings of lamb for 8 people when I was only feeding 2.  Needless to say, it turned out to be a very lamb-centric week.

I rubbed the meat with salt, pepper, olive oil and herbs de provence, then seared the lamb rack on both sides in a cast iron pan and put it in the oven.  It was incredibly, quick, easy and straightforward.  For the vegetable, I chopped some lovely rainbow chard, blanched and shocked it, then briefly warmed it in a pan with some olive oil and garlic.  I topped it with some shaved Romano cheese.  I roasted some mini Peruvian potatoes as the starch.  Just olive oil, salt, pepper, and coriander, with a pinch of rosmary and thyme.  As a dipping sauce for the lamb, I used a recipe I found with combined crème fraiche, mascarpone cheese, honey, mint and cumin.  For my purposes I switched out the cumin for coriander.  I think that cumin is generally a lime-light starring-role type of spice.  It doesn't play a supporting role very well.  There's nothing subtle about that spice.  Coriander, however, complimented nicely.  It's a more delicate, fruity spice and it tied the sauce in nicely to the potatoes and the somewhat floral character of the Romano cheese.

The meal was very rich and satisfying.  It was all very easy to throw together.  There was minimal preparation and, aside from the cast iron pan, clean-up was a snap.  That was a good thing, because I ended up recreating the meal for five friends and myself after work the next day, at which time I paired it with a Tempranillo blend from Washington called Hellcat.  When that ran out, I opened a BoomBoom Syrah, which is generally a safe bet.  There were a few other bottles mixed in there, but I didn't keep my wine tags or write down the names.

I had sworn off of lamb for a period of time after returning from Baku.  In Azerbaijan, we ate a lot of adult "lamb" (i.e. mutton) which has a very strong flavor and is generally pretty tough and dry.  I needed a bit of time to recover from that.  The lamb that we had on Easter was very mild, tender and juicy.  I'll certainly be making it again.  I'd like to get a few racks of lamb (separately packaged) to keep in the freezer for last minute dinner parties.  It's always easy to find a leafy green and a starch to add alongside.

In general, it was a fun food-filled and relaxing weekend and a great way to start out the week.