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What's on your plate today?

Made some “baked ziti”. Scratch gravy with San Marzanos.
Thinkin’ about ya Doc.

My daughter tried the sauce n pasta mixed together for the first time and loved it. Washed it down with some South African red. Delicious!
The kiddo chowin’ down.
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I forget in parts of the country people call red sauce, gravy....ugggghhhh 😆
 
Frenched Rack of lamb in the cast iron.

This is a regular meal at our house. We keep a minimum of 5 racks ready to go at any moment. One of our favorite meat meals for sure.

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I've been wanting to do these on the smoker but my wife says "lamb is to salty I won't eat it" I am going to just do it anyway, how do you season them?
 
I've been wanting to do these on the smoker but my wife says "lamb is to salty I won't eat it" I am going to just do it anyway, how do you season them?

I've done them a number of ways, and after all the trial and error for us, straight cast iron is the best. Here's what I do.

- Slice the rack up into lollipops
- Season both sides of each lollipop with salt (sorry, but fairly heavy...it can take it), pepper, and garlic powder
- Heat cast iron up to medium heat (maybe slightly lower, cast iron gets hot fast)
- toss them in, 3 minutes per side (assuming decent consistent thickness on each) feel free to toss butter on them here and there if you want.
- Let them sit 3-5 minutes
- Use hands to eat them like a caveman.

I've had all kinds of lamb, I'm telling you that these do not taste like other cuts. You do them like this and they are not at all salty. My wife's favorite meal, my kids destroy them, guests are very surprised and always want the info.

They are easy to thaw out, easy to prep, easy to cook, and absolutely delicious if you keep them medium rare. Bones get tossed in a baggy for the dog to enjoy one per night until they are gone.

Everybody wins.
 
I've done them a number of ways, and after all the trial and error for us, straight cast iron is the best. Here's what I do.

- Slice the rack up into lollipops
- Season both sides of each lollipop with salt (sorry, but fairly heavy...it can take it), pepper, and garlic powder
- Heat cast iron up to medium heat (maybe slightly lower, cast iron gets hot fast)
- toss them in, 3 minutes per side (assuming decent consistent thickness on each) feel free to toss butter on them here and there if you want.
- Let them sit 3-5 minutes
- Use hands to eat them like a caveman.

I've had all kinds of lamb, I'm telling you that these do not taste like other cuts. You do them like this and they are not at all salty. My wife's favorite meal, my kids destroy them, guests are very surprised and always want the info.

They are easy to thaw out, easy to prep, easy to cook, and absolutely delicious if you keep them medium rare. Bones get tossed in a baggy for the dog to enjoy one per night until they are gone.

Everybody wins.
This is awesome I can't wait to try these!!!! Thank you very much for your info
 
I've done them a number of ways, and after all the trial and error for us, straight cast iron is the best. Here's what I do.

- Slice the rack up into lollipops
- Season both sides of each lollipop with salt (sorry, but fairly heavy...it can take it), pepper, and garlic powder
- Heat cast iron up to medium heat (maybe slightly lower, cast iron gets hot fast)
- toss them in, 3 minutes per side (assuming decent consistent thickness on each) feel free to toss butter on them here and there if you want.
- Let them sit 3-5 minutes
- Use hands to eat them like a caveman.

I've had all kinds of lamb, I'm telling you that these do not taste like other cuts. You do them like this and they are not at all salty. My wife's favorite meal, my kids destroy them, guests are very surprised and always want the info.

They are easy to thaw out, easy to prep, easy to cook, and absolutely delicious if you keep them medium rare. Bones get tossed in a baggy for the dog to enjoy one per night until they are gone.

Everybody wins.

I'm going to have to try this. I generally roast the whole rack, or do double lollypops sous vide and then grilled on super high heat for 30 sec per side (all 4).

For anyone who doesn't like the "lambiness" in lamb, try to trim the fat far more than you would on pork or beef, or frankly anything else. I try to trim off as much of the fat as I can and replace it with olive oil. The amount depends on how I'm cooking it.
 
Today was the wife's birthday, so it started with French omelets stuffed with crème fraise, topped with sautéed shallots and caviar, served with jowl bacon. (Sorry, no pics!)

I had to work later than usual today, so I started dinner by making a Caprese salad as an appetizer -- petite mozzarella balls, multi-colored cherry tomatoes, basil from my garden, and a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

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For dinner she requested steak. There's a farm store out by the county airport that sell locally produced beef, and I bought a couple of bone-in rib steaks last time I was there, so they were the star of the dish. To go with it I made rustic-style fondant potatoes (in other words, I didn't use the fondant potato cutter I made), creamed spinach, and toasted garlic.

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Fondant potatoes are my new favorite thing. I made a potato cutter in the workshop so I could make the perfect cylinder of potato, but it leaves a lot of potato left unused that I had to make hash browns or something else out of. Tonight, I just peeled the potatoes, cut the ends off them so they would stand up in a frying pan and cooked them. They're like a French fry -- crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

And the creamed spinach! Oh my. I didn't quite get all the water out of it as you can see from the picture, but it was really great. A little mascarpone cheese and half and half go a long way to make something special out of something ordinary.
 
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