Lamb Loin Chop Sock Puppets

As I was going through this googlerific recipe for lamb loin chops I was thinking that the recipe seemed to cook the things for a really long time. I’ve only made lamb loin chops once or twice, but I know they’re pretty delicate.

And in fact, six minutes in a high-heat skillet and ten minutes in a 400 degree oven doesn’t really get that “medium-rare” temperature I was looking for. It was basically cooked to death.

All of which is well and good — recipes are sometimes solid, sometimes full of typos and wrong information. What gets me is that this is a four-fork triumph. I went through some of the comments and no one was like, “this is way too long to cook this cut of lamb.”

Time was, you could trust commenters with recipes — no, seriously! You’re just kind of like, What are you people thinking? On the other hand, this identically stupid Chowhound recipe does have a voice of reason (“Stratoblaster”) who calls out whoever the fuck posted how to destroy perfectly good lamb loin chops. So maybe Epicurious just really sucks.

When Almond Syrup Ruled The World

The Little Bit Country in the PDT book — the one with the bourbon, lemon juice, maraschino and jalapeno that helped us figure out what to do with all these jalapenos we have — is even better when you replace the maple syrup with almond syrup (orgeat). Well, maybe not necessarily better, but different and worth experimenting with.

Almond Syrup, Plus, Also, Too

I don’t want to repeat the name of the cocktail sharing the name of the post title here, mostly because I think it’s mostly offensive, even if the author seemingly innocently used it. The provenance is I’m assuming that ’80s song. I always thought the lyrics were talking about, er, onanism and, uh, what one’s eyes, uh, look like during which. The band claims otherwise but their claims are totally unbelievable [edit: went back and read the lyrics and am now doubly incredulous]. So anyway, that happened.

It’s three parts rye (or bourbon), one part orgeat, one part triple sec, one part lemon juice and several dashes of bitters. Pretty good and not medicinal tasting like the other variation on this.

Almond Syrup, Too

When we last left it, I said I wanted to try the Trinidad Sour, which is three parts rye, one part Fernet Branca, one part lemon juice and one part orgeat (or whatever you’re using). This is good — the Fernet Branca is medicinal but you get used to it, which I know doesn’t sound appetizing, but in the end/by the end, it’s a nice cocktail.

This Is Just To Say: Butternut Squash And Blue Cheese

The CSA is deep into winter squash mode and they’re starting to pile up on the counter, so I figured we should make a dent in the backlog. I looked up “butternut squash” in Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus and saw blue cheese and butternut squash as a good combination. Also, it seemed like it could work nicely with the pork chops we were having. Also, I had a hunk of blue cheese left over from the other night when we made a wedge salad, so . . . you see where this is going.

Jen was immediately taken with the combination: “How’d you figure this out?” (I gave credit to the book, obviously).
Definitely worth doing again.