Cooking For Leslie

Welcome. My name is Stu and this is my blog. This blog is my attempt to document my foray into semi-serious cooking, which I dedicate to my lovely wife Leslie (who is a spicy dish all on her own). My hope is that readers who are novices in the kitchen will be encouraged to take risks and to feel braver in their cooking. If you'd like to email me privately (instead of posting to the comments section) my address is stumark@earthlink.net

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Location: Redondo Beach, California, United States

“Every man's memory is his private literature.” -- Aldous Huxley

Friday, February 25, 2005

Grilled Lamb with Mango Chutney

I've got company coming tonight. Not willing to make something ordinary, I decided on lamb, as lamb seems a bit more exotic than beef or chicken. I picked out a recipe for Grilled Lamb with Mango Chutney from the Culinary Institute of America's book Cooking At Home.

Here's the ingredient list:

2 mangoes, peeled and diced
1 lime
1 teaspoon dill weed
1 teaspoon parsley
3 tablespoons minced ginger
1 teaspoon red pepper
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon cumin
1 small yellow onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground or grated
1/2 cup (or more) plain yogurt
2 pounds boneless leg of lamb

The object of this recipe is simple. Make the yogurt marinade, slice up strips of lamb and coat with marinade, make the chutney, grill the lamb, serve over chutney.

First I made the marinade. I heated up a pan, then added a little olive oil. I dumped in the onion, the ginger, the garlic, and then added the cardamom and cumin and pepper. I stirred for about a minute, until the scent of the spices woke up and became apparent. Then I poured it into a bowl and let it cool.

Meanwhile I cut my lamb into strips. Once that was done I added the yogurt to the bowl of onion/ginger/garlic/etc. and mixed it up. Then I coated each piece of lamb in the marinate and transfered it to a big ziplock bag. Eventually the bag got full of meat and yogurt mix. Then I sealed the bag and smooshed the meat around so it got nicely coated. Lastly I put the bag in the fridge and let it marinate.

Next I put up some rice (in my huge Krups rice cooker). Then came time to make the chutney. The mangos were the hard part here and after some laughable attempts at peeling, I had Leslie do it. (You have to peel mangos because the skin isn't good for you.) Once they were peeled, dicing was next. Roughly diced is fine, but feel free to turn the mangos into a paste. Then throw them in a mixing bowl, add the juice of one lime. To that, add lots of dill weed and parsley and ginger. For the ginger, I like the kind that comes in a tube, pre-minced. In this recipe I ended up using a lot of ginger (maybe two or three tablespoons). Lastly I added salt and pepper. Stirred with a fork and then set aside.

Then I pulled the lamb from the fridge and skewered it on my skewers. I put the skewers on a medium-heat grill and grilled about 4 or 5 minutes, then flipped them, then grilled 4 or 5 more minutes, till they looked nice and cooked.

To serve, I laid a small bed of rice on a plate, then pulled the lamb off one skewer and placed it on the rice, then covered the lamb with the chutney.

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

yummmy. My mouth is watering though I am now a raw foodist : (.

10:58 PM  

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