April 19, 2015 Breakfast Smoked Salmon, Red Onion and Goat cheese omelet Dinner- Grilled Rack of lamb and Eggplant with Chard and Couscous

April 19, 2015 Breakfast - Smoked Salmon, Red Onion and Goat cheese omelet  

                        Dinner- Grilled Rack of lamb and Eggplant with Chard and Couscous

Both Suzette and I are very busy; she with remodeling her Spa and Restaurant and me with writing a brief, so the time we share is limited and very dear and usually revolves around food.

She had about an hour this morning to fix breakfast and we decided to use some of the new gravad lax to make one of those deli favorites, a smoked salmon, red onion and cream cheese omelet but with the substitution of cranberry goat cheese instead of the cream cheese and the addition of capers,

the cranberry goat cheese

After the omelet was made we garnished it with slices of avocado some sweet mustard sauce I had made last week with mayonnaise, Dijon mustard and honey.

Suzette came home at 4:00 and helped Mario install the gate to the new area of the garden today and planted celeriac and a couple of herbs she bought yesterday.

I bought a 2+ lb. piece of lamb shoulder because it was cheap at $2.29/lb. and a parsnip last Saturday at Sprouts.  This Saturday night we opened the lamb shoulder package and discovered four or five ribs on one side of it, so Suzette butchered the ½ of the shoulder with the riblets away from the shoulder bone ½ and repacked and put the riblet 1/2 into the fridge.  I looked okay to me but a bit fatty, so I did not think it would be very tasty.  

Suzette cubed the remaining meat from the bone and I chopped carrots, potatoes, half of the celeriac, onions, and the parsnip and some garlic cloves and Suzette tossed the chopped vegetables in olive oil and she roasted about ½ of them in a 350˚ oven for 45 minutes covered and 15 minutes uncovered and put the lamb bone and cubed lamb into a pot with ½ of the vegetables and some oregano and chopped fresh sage and made a lamb stew that we ate with glasses of Perrin Family 2011 Côtes du Rhône Reserve, which is my new favorite red wine, since I discovered that Total wine sells it for $7.99.  

The Lamb Stew

I usually go every two to three weeks to buy wine and this time there was a 15% off coupon available so the final price was $6.79 per bottle (I used to buy the dame bottle at Trader Joe’s for $9.99).  It is a smooth, yet complex blend of southern Rhône grapes, but mostly syrah and Grenache with perhaps a bit of Mouvedre.  Perrin owns and makes Chateau Beaucastel, with the same types of grapes, which is one of the great wines of the world.  

There are lots of other wines made by Perrin.  The 2010 Chateau Beaucastel was rated 96 by Wine spectator and is one of their top 100 wines in the world.  The Reserve is the 4^th or 5^th rung down the ladder from the Chateau but at $7.00 versus $100 for Chateau Beaucastel, a great value.

I picked chard in the garden and some chives and a garlic plant and cleaned and chopped them up.  I also sliced the eggplant.  Suzette coated the eggplant with olive oil and grilled the eggplant slices with the lamb, while I made couscous with 1 Tbsp. of olive oil and 1 ½ Tbsp. of butter and then sautéed 1 cup of couscous for a minute and then added 1 ½ cups of water and the greens.  I cooked the couscous for a bout two minutes to develop steam and then turned the heat off.  I tasted the couscous and found that some had not gone into solution because it got stuck on top of the chard, so I stirred the couscous and moved the top down to the bottom and turned on the heat for a minute more. 

Suzette brought in the grilled slices of eggplant and ww sprinkled them with feta cheese and then covered them to keep them warm.  In another two or three minutes she brought in the lamb riblet and covered that with aluminum also, while I finished cooking and then letting the couscous cook without heat.

We poured glasses of the PPI Perrin Reserve and had a fabulous meal.  The lamb was layers of fat and meat but not stringy, like beef.  We simply cut the fat away from the meat and ate bites of eggplant, lamb and mint jelly and then bites of couscous and chard.

This was a wonderful meal for me because I discovered that one of our favorite cuts of meat, rack of lamb could be bought for $2.29/lb.  Also, I love the Perrin wines and will try others, although I may be permanently stuck on their Reserve for $7.00/bottle.

Bon Appétit