Thursday, August 19, 2010

It's all Greek to me

Kalispera!

Well, other than having a bit of a tough time finding boneless lamb, this meal came together splendidly.

I was going to wax poetic about one of my other favourite kitchen tools, but blenderdance beat me to it!  I made quick work of mincing the ginger using my microplane.  I really love this thing.  It's absolutely perfect for grating Parmesan.



My means of dealing with leftover fresh ginger (and a way to have "fresh" ginger on hand nearly all the time) is to dump the leftovers into a plastic baggie in the freezer.


It keeps really well in the freezer and grates even easier when it's frozen.  I'd like to thank chef Michael Smith for the "keep ginger in the freezer" tip!  Also, I think it's time to make up a loaf of banana bread (or 3).

After visiting my regular grocery store, a local specialty grocery store and the organic grocery store near my work, I thought I might have to break down and go with lamb chops for this meal.  Then, I called over to the meat department at Whole Foods (I'm lucky in that one of the few that are in Canada is about a 5 minute drive from my work) and discovered that they had not 1, but 2 cuts of boneless lamb.  And really, I should have thought of them earlier.  If it's good enough for Top Chef, it's good enough for me.

After marinating over night, I set up the lamb with the onion and pepper on my reusable metal skewers and got them on the grill.




Keeping with a Greek themed meal I served the skewers with a Greek salad, grilled pita, tzatziki, and some grilled halloumi cheese.  Opa!


I was very lucky to be able to share this meal with both Derek and my good friend Shannon that was down visiting from Ottawa.  She only just moved there about 4 weeks ago (after living 2 km from my house) so it was really great to sit down and enjoy this awesome meal with them.  All in all I really liked this meal.  I think that next time, however, I'd skip basting the skewers with the marinade, because while it did impart a bit of extra flavour to the veggies, it left a bit too much, um, residue (?) on the meat.  The flavours were fantastic though, and I will definitely make this again!

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