I have to admit, I am excited about the menu for next week. After this week of eating out and sporadic cooking, I am ready to cook us up some good food!
In a couple weeks we will receive our next meat order. Since our budget allows 80$ a month on meat (and eggs) I do not feel too bad about eating up what’s in our freezer so that we can buy some more deliciousness. We currently have one more pound of ground lamb, one whole chicken and 2 packs of lamb shanks. (I intended on using some of those shanks this week but choose to make lamb dogs with a pack of ground lamb. In fact I made this today for lunch and they were fabulous! See my makeshift recipe below for details.) And so to spice up next week I decided we would use one pair of shanks and the whole birdie. Cause if you don’t know it yet, pasture-raised chickens are so incredibly tender when roasted. And this week I’ll be brining it and then roasting it for extra tenderness, like butta. Here’s what I’m planning:
- Spicy blackened catfish with sauteed greens (from the garden) and a celeriac and potato gratin
- Moroccan spiced roasted chicken (secret recipe courtesy of Chef Aaron Slavic and Sam Miller at Cafe Maude) with a carrot and parsnip puree (courtesy Martha Stewart) and some roasted broccoli
- Baked lamb shanks (courtesy Jamie Oliver) with sauteed greens (from the garden) and mashed potatoes
- Potato and leek soup with a side salad
- Pasta with zucchini and onion, steamed broccoli and a side salad
- Quiche with side salad
- Lamb burgers
Per request of my dear wife, I decided to add some more meals so that we do not have to eat out on the weekends, which is what usually happens. So there are 7 meals and 7 nights, the last of which (next Friday) is a BBQ and that is where I will make the lamb burgers. As you can see though, 5 of the recipes are not mine. In fact, none of the food I make is “mine.” I am one to collect and follow recipes. I trust the hard work other chefs pursued to create good dishes; and I don’t have the money to experiment on my own. That said, I do want to evolve into someone who can mimic or create a good dish – not a stir fry of random veggies or a soup of ‘what’s in the fridge.’ It so happens that today I recreated a recipe I remembered making a couple times – lamb dogs. For those of you interested, here’s how it went down:
- I minced up about 1/3 cup of fresh basil, mint and parsley from the garden
- Put the herbs in a bowl with one egg, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1 cup of cooked rice and 1 pound of ground lamb
- Mix all the ingredients together and form into patties or “dogs” that have a skewer pierced through them
- Broil the dogs for about 8 minutes total, making sure to flip them once
The dogs turned out great. As a side I had some glazed carrots and steamed zucchini. Honestly, sometimes I think it is all about simplicity. I love the construct of meat, grain and veggie or meat and two veggies. You will notice that most of my meals revolve around this structure. I find it easiest to create meals with this pattern in mind.
So that’s the plan Stan. I look forward to seeing the costs, especially since I made the effort of choosing vegetables that are in season for all of the dishes. It will be a very tasty, affordable and of course, local/organic/sustainable menu to begin the coming Fall.
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