Category: sauces marinades and dressings

I made another kick-arse dinner.

It came about from a post by Blackbird the other day, that she didn’t get Nigella and me trying to find the recipe for these cute little prosciutto parcels she prepared on one of her Christmas cooking specials.

Somehow I fell upon her recipe for lamb with garlicky tahini.

A sensation.

She used lamb noisettes (whatever they may be) so I used some lamb rump chops I’d had kicking round the freezer for long enough to be annoying. I sort of halved/altered the recipe to suit what I had and the crowd I was feeding – for the official details see the link above.

Nigella Lawson’s Lamb with garlicky tahini

• 4 lamb rump chops
• a good lug of olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced thickly
• a sprinkle of cumin
• grated rind of 1 lemon

marinate like so

In the meantime, I prepared my sweet potato rosti. I can’t remember where I got this recipe, but I’ve been making it for about 6 years and hadn’t made it in ages.

Sweet Potato Rosti

• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and then sliced using the peeler
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 tblsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup parmesan (although tonight I used some pecorino pepato, which worked a treat)
• salt and pepper

Mix the sweet potatoes with the other ingredients.
Spread out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, like so:
Bake at 220C for 15 minutes. (that’s right, it only takes 15 minutes, how good is that!?!)
It looks like this:

As the potato is cooking, sear the lamb in a skillet for 1-2 minutes on each side like so:

Then cook in the oven for 10 minutes or until it’s cooked to your liking (I should have only cooked it in the oven for about 5-6 minutes). Nigella says to put it in a new baking pan for the stint in the oven, but I thought bugger that and while the meat was searing, had put the marinade dish in the oven. Then I simply transferred the chops back into the warmed/cooking marinade for its oven component.

The garlicky tahini
I halved Nigella’s recipe and it was plenty for me and the boys (if you were feeding all adults, probably do the full recipe as below). it was divine and the kind of food I could eat by the bucketload. There’s about a tablespoon left which I am planning to eat on warmed pita bread tomorrow for lunch.

• 8 tblsp tahini
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• juice of 2 lemons
• approx 1/4 cup water
• salt and pepper

– mix the garlic into the tahini
– add the lemon juice – it will go very stiff
– add enough water to loosen it. Don’t make it runny, just spoonable.
– season.

I served it all with some green beans. The boys loved it, I loved it, a sensation! (And all done in under half an hour.)