February 16, 2015 Lunch Cesar Salad Dinner Grilled Lamb Chops, Steamed Broccoli, Sautéed Potatoes and Tzatziki Sauce

February 16, 2015 Lunch  Cesar Salad   Dinner  Grilled Lamb Chops, Steamed Broccoli, Sautéed Potatoes and Onion and Tzatziki Sauce

I had a craving for a good Cesar Salad for lunch, probably because I had bought a good head of Romaine lettuce at Sprouts Farm Market last Friday, along with several clusters of vine ripened tomatoes ($.99/lb.), broccoli heads ($.99/lb.), an eggplant ($.99 each), and green onions ($.69/bunch).

At noon I tore six or seven leaves of Romaine into a bowl, sliced a tomato and a green onion and added slices of Pecorino Romano cheese and warmed croutons and doused the top with my new Cesar Salad dressing and Viola, a Cesar Salad.

After lunch I thawed out four lamb chops from the freezer.

Around 3:00 I rode to Montano and back in 50 minutes, which is 10 minutes faster than usual and it tired me so I was ready for some protein at dinner and was happy we had lamb chops.

When Suzette came home we decided to cook at 6:00 even though Gilbert and Marvin were still cleaning out the clogged kitchen sink trap.  Suzette salted and peppered and grilled the four lamb chops to perfection and steamed 1 and ½ heads of broccoli.  We had a small bag of red potato cubes that I had cut up last week that we had thought we might make into potato salad but decided had to be cooked, so I sliced ½ of an onion into thin slices and Suzette sautéed the onion with a chopped clove of garlic and the 2 cups of potato cubes in a skillet with butter and olive oil.

I then remembered the fresh Boblos Greek yogurt I had bought at Istanbul Market last Thursday was in the fridge in the garage, so I made a Tzatziki Sauce for the lamb.  I used the following recipe but cut the ingredients by 2/3’s because I had only 1/3 of a cucumber, 1 tsp. of mint (from the plants in our dining room) and 1 tsp. of dill from the garden.  The only additional item I added to the sauce was 1 Tsp. of olive oil to give it a smoother, saucier texture.     

Tzatziki Sauce

Yields 3 1/2 Cups Units US

• 3 cups Greek yogurt (also called Yogurt Cheese, see below for alternative)
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice (or juice of one lemon)
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 large English cucumber, diced (the long, skinny ones)
• 1 tablespoon salt (for salting cucumbers)
• 1 tablespoon fresh dill (or both, depending on preference) or 1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped (or both, depending on preference)
• salt & freshly ground black pepper

We finished an open bottle of Concha y Toro Cabernet/Merlot blend ($7.99 for a 1.5 liter bottle at Costco) and were happy campers as we watched the Antiques Roadshow.

 

Suzette cooked the lamb chops to perfection.  She had cooked them to rare and then covered them with a sheet of aluminum foil for about fifteen minutes while Gilbert and Marvin cleaned up under the kitchen sink and I made the Tzatziki sauce.  The chops turned out to be a medium rare pink through the entire chop.  This method of covering a cooked meat chop with aluminum to let it cook slowly off the heat is something Suzette has taught me and it is a major revelation to me.  We will do it more often in the future.

Also, when the other dishes were ready and we uncovered the chops, a bit of cooking juices had accumulated around the chops that I poured onto my plate and combined with the tzatziki sauce to make a more flavorful sauce for the meat.

The sliced garlic clove I put into the potatoes and the 1/2 clove of fresh garlic I put into the tzatziki must have been a bit too much, because four hours later I am still burping garlic.  I hope that is a sign that it is cleansing my insides. 

Since I not able to sleep due to effects of too much garlic I will tell you my most memorable garlic burping experience.  It is related to the first and only time I ever dropped mescalin.  I was staying at my uncle and aunt's house in Fort Lee, New Jersey and was on my way to Denmark for the summer of 1968.  I was picked up by friends from Austin who lived in New Jersey and we went to New York City for the evening.

They were minor drug dealers and they gave me my first tab of mescalin.  I remember vividly meeting Bob "the Bear" Hite of Canned Heat (that did "Goin' Up to the Country" and "On the Road Again" at Woodstock), who was hanging out at Washington Square and then walking down a street just south of Washington Square where we were taunted by transvestites from across the street.  We decided to stop for a piece of pizza at a restaurant that sold slices of pizza from an open window.

There were shaker bottles full of condiments on a counter by the restaurant's open window and I remember shaking a generous quantity of what I thought was grated Parmesan cheese onto the top of my piece of pizza but in my rather disoriented mental condition it turned out to be dehydrated garlic.  
I burped garlic for three days.  

Bon Appétit