Dinner, Lamb, Lunch, Meats, Side dish

Pistachio Masala Lamb Chops with Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Summer is officially over, which hopefully means that even those of you without temperature controlled apartments have regained use of your oven. What better way to celebrate than to heat it up and cook lamb chops smothered in pistachios and spices.

This recipe calls for meat masala, an Indian spice mix. If you can’t find it, you can use garam or chaat masala instead. I initially got my masala spice mix when I first made chana masala, an Indian chickpea dish, and it quickly became my husband’s go-to spice when he cooks meat, fish, and even fried eggs. We sometimes put it on homemade popcorn. If you can’t find it or if you’re not convinced of how versatile masala can be, you can use a sprinkle of each of the main ingredients it contains instead: ground coriander, cumin, fennel, and black pepper.

We usually get three lamb loin chops, one each plus another to share, so the recipe yields three pork loin chops and two servings of roasted baby potatoes on the side.

P.S. Yesterday was the first anniversary of my first post!

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Dinner, Lamb, Lunch, Meats

Ground lamb with pistachios, pine nuts, sumac, and a side salad

Spicy lentil soup with sausage on alickofsalt.com

This is the most labour-intensive recipe posted here so far, but it is a delicious one. It is a Middle Eastern dish heavily adapted from Jerusalem: A Cookbook. It is actually the cover recipe of the book, to give you a sense of what I mean by ‘heavily adapted.’ The original recipe calls for using yields from three other recipes to make it, harissa and preserved lemon peel, and Zhoug. I use none of these here, but I bring in ingredients from all into the dish.

There are quite a few exotic spices in this recipe, the most exotic of which is sumac. Sumac is a slightly tart spice that can be used as a salt replacement. It is a beautiful purple color and the reason the lamb in the picture looks the way it does. You may have seen it in salt shakers at Middle Eastern restaurants. If your grocery store doesn’t carry it, check Middle Eastern or Mediterranean shops or look for it online.

The recipe calls for ground seeds so if you have a mortar and pestle, it’s time to break it out! If you can’t be bothered, use already ground spices. We used our brand new mortar and pestle but we only had caraway and cumin seeds on hand and we used already ground coriander. Directions on how to prepare your own ground spices are below in the Tips section.

We serve it with two slices of toast and a salad with carrots, beets, avocado, pomegranate seeds (when they’re in season), and a simple dressing.

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