Lamb cutlets

Yesterday was spent recuperating from a great night out two days ago (! that's how good it was) and cooking for various sick family members in the house. This produced a couple of soups and a lot of grated apple. The Orange and White Asparagus Soup will definitely be made again.

But not having foreseen the blight of sickness, I had already done the shopping in anticipation of being able to cook something a little different. I went ahead with this plan for dinner and was not disappointed. The results of this recipe will have me raving like a lunatic for some time yet.

It is, to me, the perfect finger food. The cutlets can be enjoyed without cutlery and I will definitely make this for the next party, that deserves a bit of effort.
These crunchy, juicy morsels of meat had the perfect texture for the creamy yogurt sauce. The cumin and the fresh coriander gave it the perfect hint of Asia.
Can you sense that I LOVED this? And I was not alone.

Please excuse the lack of appropriate photo-documentation. This is one instance in which a thousand raving words will have to do instead of the perfect picture. (Hope to change that soon.)

This recipe is adapted from Bill Grangers Everyday book.

12 french trimmed lamb cutlets
1 egg
1,5 tablespoons milk
flour
80 grams of fresh bread crumbs
one small handful of finely chopped flat leaved parsley
1 generous tablespoon of finely chopped fresh coriander leaves
1 teaspoon lemon zest
half a teaspoon of ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil for frying

Fill your flour into a flat, deep plate or bowl. In a second dish beat together the egg and milk. In the third mix together the breadcrumbs, herbs, zest and cumin. Then season to taste.
Take your lamb cutlets and beat them gently with the broad side of a chopping knife or a rolling pin. A classic meat hammer would probably tear them to shreds in seconds...
Dip the pieces of meat first in the flour (shake off excess), then in the egg and lastly into the crumb mixture. The general goal is to get as much breadcrumbs to stick and turn these beauties into crunchy delicacies when fried up.

Heat a frying pan to medium-high heat, add olive oil and fry the cutlets in batches for about two minutes per side. Keep them warm in the oven until you want to serve them.

Herb Yogurt Sauce
125 ml greek yogurt
2 tablespoons flat leaved parsley chopped
2 tablespoons coriander chopped
1 teaspoon lemon zest
salt to taste
a pinch of crumbled dry or finely chopped fresh chili, if desired

Very simply mix all of the above together and serve with your warm lamb cutlets.

*Advice on buying the meat in Switzerland: I found the cutlets sold at the local Coop to be slightly on the thick side. I chose to buy lamb racks instead and cut them up at home.

Hooray for Spring and hooray for Soda Bread

The trees may be bare and the grass not yet green, but spring is definitely approaching! It's nearing is proclaimed by the first snowdrops and daffodil shoots, the birdsong which is noticed more than at any other time of the year and my personal spring fever which lead to purchase and potting of these beauties:


And not to be forgotten: The fact, that I am blogging from our veranda enjoying the sights of all of the above. Yes, I might still be in a light fleece while doing so. But I no longer need to don mittens, a scarf and a hat in the attempt. :-)

Today is St. Patrick's Day. This is not of any consequence in Switzerland. You can go everywhere without being confronted with the color green. We go from Carnival decorations strait to the Easter stuff.

Through reading blogs I adore from all over the world I am aware that this day has a lot of food connotations in other countries. And since I didn't want to dive in with corned beef or green beer, I thought I would try my hand at making a Soda Bread


The recipe can be found at smitten kitchen: http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/03/irish-soda-bread-scones/

I made some slight changes:
Since I had some cranberries in the pantry I added a mixture of currants and those. I like the tartness they added.
With no baking soda or cream of tartar (don't think you can even get that here) in the house, both were substituted with baking powder.

I love the result, especially with lots of cold butter. I am not sure however, if I might not have kneaded the dough enough....
I will definitely make this again but will probably try out a savoury version next.
Any suggestions?

That kind of day...

Have you ever had to take three tries to cook an egg?

And I am not talking about some fancy poached number. (I know they're supposed to be easy. The skill of their preparation just eludes me.) I am talking about a plain and simple soft boiled egg.

First try; (And I HATE when this happens.) The egg shell cracks a couple of seconds after you let it slide into the boiling water with the utmost delicacy.
Second try: To save you breakfast (and face) you decide to make a simple oeuf en cocotte. So you save the cracked egg from the boiling water and put it into one of those ramekins with a splash of cream, salt and pepper. The ramekin goes back into the pan with the slightly murky water and you give it an extra minute.
At the end of the allotted time you take it out carefully and unscrew the top to see if the egg is done. Of course not! So you put the bugger back into the water, but because you didn't screw on the top correctly, the whole thing falls out of your hand and empties its contents into the already murky water. Aaaargh!
Third try: You clean out the pan, put new water to boil, get a new egg out of the fridge and put the warm egg yolk (the only part of your prior experiments you were able to save) onto a piece of toast, which you devour as you wait for your egg to boil.
Congratulations! Third time lucky!

Some days have hardly begun and you already can't wait until they're over.
I'm glad this one is.