I picked up some lamb shoulder chops at Pak N Save meat week, figuring that they'd work quite well with black peppercorn marinade (p190). Despite having this plan in mind, I didn't think to check on the marinade ingredients and get them while I was at Pakkers, so I had to make a dash down to Countdown later that afternoon for lemons and peppercorns.
Having acquired all the ingredients, I set about making my marinade. The recipe required "coarsely crushed" black peppercorns, and I thought my grinder would probably grind them too fine, so I bunged them in the pestle and mortar to bash them up.
To the peppercorns I added lemon juice, chopped parsley and crushed garlic. I mixed them up in the same dish I intended to marinate my chops in, since there wasn't much point dirtying an extra bowl. When the marinade was nicely combined, I coated a couple of chops in the mixture, and left them for an hour or so.
When the marinating time was up, I briefly bunged my chops under the grill for about 6 minutes each side, as the meat section recommends for cooking lamb chops to medium (possibly these grilling times refer to use in a grilling pan, not the oven grill - it's not really clear. In any case, I don't have a grilling pan). I found this resulted in chops that were far too rare for my liking. It's funny that I like beef medium rare, but prefer lamb well-done.
As for the marinade, well, I can't really knock it since it did what marinades are supposed to do - the meat was well tenderised and it certainly added more flavour. My complaint was that it added too much flavour: in fact, you really couldn't taste anything but pepper.
I was all ready to write about how the recipe states you should serve the meat with the peppercorn coating, and that this really doesn't taste too pleasant. Except that when I look again at the recipe, I see it says to cook the meat in the peppercorn coating - it doesn't say to serve it like that! So once again, my not paying attention has led to a less enjoyable meal. I had the second one today - with the marinade scraped off - and it was quite tasty. So as long as you get rid of all those peppercorns once the meat is cooked, this is a pretty good marinade.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular posts this week
-
After spending the past few weeks absorbed in the 'delights' of moving house, I found that Christmas has suddenly appeared on my d...
-
On Tuesday afternoon, I was planning to swing by Raeward Fresh on my way home from work to get some fruit. Since I didn't have anything ...
-
I came home from work this afternoon and got out a chicken breast to make chicken chow mein (p147). Once it was defrosted, I sliced it thinl...
-
There was one Christmas recipe I hadn't managed to cross off my list in previous years: I really had no choice but to make Christmas p...
-
I had about 300g of food processor pastry left over from my quiche the other day, so when I arrived home last night with no idea what I wa...
-
Well, actually my gravy did need sieving. But I'm getting ahead of myself here... This particular journey began - as so many do - wit...
-
On being invited to Lauren and Tom's for dinner last night, I once again offered to bring a dessert. It didn't take me long to choos...
-
On Friday evening, having put my relish on to boil, I turned my attention to the savoury nibbles I'd offered to bring. I'd decided ...
-
You might assume, with my less-than-perfect track record with sponges, that I would be approaching any and all sponge recipes with a certain...
-
It's about the crackling, of course! The thing is, roast pork is not an actual recipe in the Edmonds book - in fact, it's barely men...
No comments:
Post a Comment