Grilled lamb chops are the perfect date night dinner, especially when it’s been a busy day and you don’t have a ton of prep time. Where I live, Trader Joe’s is always a sure bet to have New Zealand Lamb racks in stock. I can occasionally find them at Sprouts, but that’s about it. I like to make a simple herb marinade with thyme, rosemary & Italian parsley and then grill them. The presentation is elegant and they’re delicious when paired with a spicy red wine like a Malbec or Cabernet Sauvignon. So good!
Combine all in a bowl. Remove the membrane from the back of the ribs (check out the videos below), then rub generously all over both sides of the slabs. This recipe makes enough rub for 2-3 slabs of spareribs.
I grill my ribs on a gas grill since I don’t have a smoker. I light one side of the grill on low heat and place the ribs on foil on the unlit side and cook (grill covered) for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. I’m being pretty generous with the time intervals because when I’m grilling for a long time like this, I’m usually also doing something else and not keeping precise track of time.
Next cover the ribs with another sheet of foil to seal them and cook for another 1 to 1 1/2 hours letting the steam from the ribs permeate the meat.
Last step is to remove the ribs from the foil and place directly on the grill for 30 minutes letting them dry on the outside. Keep them on the unlit side of the grill! At this point, they’ve likely shrunk enough to turn them perpendicular on the grill and
Here’s a couple videos on getting the membrane off the back of the spare ribs:
A few months ago, we ate out at J. Alexander’s. I honestly can’t remember anything about that dinner with the notable exception of the grilled artichokes we had as an appetizer. First time to ever have them grilled and I was totally sold. They were awesome! Since that dinner, I’ve tried a handful of different recipes, mixing and mashing techniques from the internet until I ran across Tori Avey’s method from toriavey.com. She nailed it!
It seems like Laree & I have been in a “steak night” rutfor quite a while. In fact, it seems like since school started in the fall, that we haven’t gotten caught up and that our Saturdays have been packed with either projects that didn’t get done during the week or with some of the activities that we’re over-committed to that my usual ritual of thumbing through the latest issue of Bon Apetite for recipe ideas has gone totally by the wayside. So, as you can probably imagine, we get to 5:00 on Saturday evening & we are looking at each other saying, “What do you want to do for date night?”
Sure, we’ve been through some ruts before, like the “Chinese Take Out” rut and the “Let’s Just Have Fish Again” rut, but those are usually short lived. But it seems like this fall we’ve really been through a long rut… Steak Night. I guess part of the longevity of the steak night rut is that we both really love a good steak and if you’re going to have a fall back routine, throwing a steak on the grill isn’t a bad one. But after what seems like many weeks now, as much as I love steak, I’m starting to yearn for a different experience, or at least something to kick it up a notch.
And so, again around 5:00 on Saturday, when I finally remembered to think about our Date Night I had my yearning for something different. And again, no time to prep. The conversation goes something like this:
“Have you thought about what you want for date night?” (as if to say, “hey, I’ve been racking my brain and haven’t come up with anything”. Yea, right!)
“Hmmm, I don’t know… Let’s think…”
“Well, we could always do steaks again.”
“You know I always love a good steak.”
“Ok, let’s just do steak. What do you want with your steak…”
And so it continues…
And again, I find myself at the neighborhood grocery store wandering around, with no plan, thinking about what would go with steak that we haven’t already had too many times. And so, I had an idea that turned out pretty good and kicked it up a notch.
First, I have to say that in addition to our steak rut, we’ve been in a sweet potato rut. It’s like the domino effect. We love steak and so that’s the fall back plan. And in my opinion, nothing goes with a steak quite like a sweet potato, they become the secondary fallback plan. I usually like to bake a sweet potato in the oven at 400 degrees for something like a hour and 15 minutes until it’s totally mushy inside. Kind of the standard approach. Did that last week.
This week we’re still going to do sweet potatoes, but tonight I’m going to cut them in chunks and season with cinnamon sugar and rosemary. There’s a nice fall balance there to go with the season. I’m going to drop my chunks from 2 sweet potatoes (after I’ve skinned them) into a large freezer bag. I’m using canola oil tonight instead of my usual olive oil, because I think the olive oil clashes a little with the cinnamon. Then I’m going to season liberally with both the cinnamon sugar (just cinnamon is fine too but I want to get them extra sweet) and rosemary leaves. Then I’ll place them on a baking pan in the middle rack of my oven and bake them on 400 degrees until they get a dark brown crispy crust in places, usually about 25 minutes or so. Keep watching them so you get the texture and color how you like. This part is totally personal preference. Don’t forget to shake the pan a couple times during cooking, just to rough them up a bit.
Asparagus with Pancetta
Since my mom always taught me to have something green, and because green contrasts so nice with the orange of the potatoes and the brown char-grilled steak, I’m adding asparagus to tonight’s lineup. I love oven roasted asparagus with a little olive oil, kosher salt & cracked pepper, but tonight I’m going to add a little twist. I picked up some pancetta in the deli section. Pancetta is basically an Italian bacon and it’s pretty expensive per pound, but I’m just getting enough, sliced paper thin but not falling apart, to wrap around the stems of my asparagus, probably something like 3 oz or 15 slices. This is going to lend a nice subtly smokey flavor to my asparagus. I’m simply going to roll them around the stems of my asparagus – they’re not big enough to wrap the entire asparagus and that’s not the look I want anyway – sprinkle them with kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper, and bake them when my potatoes are done for about 10-15 minutes, again depending on how much you want them done. I like them before the asparagus starts to turn brown from baking and still have a little crunch to them.
As for the steaks, that’s simple. I usually buy supermarket steaks and I prefer ribeyes, but I’ll take a New York Strip too and if the cut is good, maybe they’re an inch thick. Grill those guys over a layer of gray charcoal for 4 minutes on each side for medium rare (my preference) or 5 minutes for medium (Laree’s preference). Remember, different grills cook differently and it depends a lot on the thickness of the steaks. Just find your sweet spot and remember it.
I’ve started the potatoes as soon as i got back from the store and could get them cut up. They take the longest. Then I can lend Laree a hand getting the kids down early. I know my coals will take about 25 minutes to get good and hot and that’s good for some talk time with Laree. I’ll plan on putting the asparagus in just before I actually start cooking the steaks. We’re hungry & have a little time to kill, so I’m thinking appetizer!
My Antipasto Board
Here’s something you may want to try, or take the idea and run with it. I’m going to surprise Laree with an antipasto board tonight. Since she loves pickled stuff, I’m going with a sweet and sour idea. Some sweet baby gherkin pickles, some kalamata olives (both out of the jar) and some extra sharp white cheddar cheese squares (the supermarket was a little weak on artisan cheeses tonight). I arranged these guys in nice little piles on a wooden cutting board for a nice rustic look. Make sure to put the pickles and olives on a paper towel first to absorb the juice. We don’t want a big puddle on the cutting board taking away from the effect!
Add a red wine with some kick to it like a Cabernet Sauvignon and a bottle of San Pellegrino or whatever sparkling water you prefer, a couple candles, and whatever playlist you think fits the mood (tonight mine is Norah Jones and Alison Krauss) and make it a Date Night!
