Tag: lamb chops

Spaghetti with bacon, mushrooms and cream sauce

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  • Serves: 2

  • Prep time: 15 mins

  • Cooking time: 20 mins

  • Total time: 35 mins

  • Skill level: Easy peasy

  • Costs: Cheap as chips

You can make this creamy smoky sauce in batches and freeze it. It is fantastic with chicken and pork, or just on it’s own, as with this pork dish. For best results, use any kind of ribbon pasta, such as spaghetti, linguine, angel hair or pappardelle. Cook for according to the packet instructions and toss in the delicious, creamy mushroom sauce for the perfect finish. Top with grated Parmesan and fresh herbs to serve.

Ingredients

For the sauce:

  • 1tbsp olive oil
  • 6 rashers smoked streaky bacon
  • 250g white or chestnut mushrooms
  • 250ml double cream
  • 1 glass white wine
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 30g unsalted butter
  • 2 spring onions, finely chopped
  • 1tbsp thyme leaves thyme
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the pasta:

  • Dried spaghetti (cooked in a large pan of boiling water, according to packet instructions, approx. 8-9 mins)

That’s goodtoknow

Have you tried American bacon? It is sweeter and smokier than British bacon and works wonderfully well with this recipe

Method

  1. Clean and prepare the mushrooms (If there is a lot of soil, you can wash them in water and pat them dry with kitchen towel)
  2. Remove the stalks and reserve for the mushroom stock. Finely chop the tops.
  3. Make a simple mushroom stock by adding the stalks to a pan of water and bringing it to the boil. Once it boils, add a capful of wine and a crushed clove of garlic then turn down the heat and let it simmer.
  4. Add a knob of butter to a hot saucepan pan and add a splash of olive oil, which will stop the butter from burning. Add the spring onions and mushrooms and cook them down until all the water has been released (you will hear the sound change from a bubbling to a sizzling). Now add a splash of wine into the pan. The pan must be hot enough for the wine to bubble fiercely and burn off the alcohol. Once the booze has cooked off add 100ml of the mushroom stock to the mushrooms and leave to simmer.
  5. Cut the bacon into a fine dice and fry off until crispy. Reserve for later.
  6. Once the liquid of the sauce has reduced down again, add the cream and allow to simmer and reduce the flavours. When the sauce starts to bubble thickly it is ready. Add a tablespoon more of the mushroom stock to thin it out and then add the bacon and thyme. Season with salt and pepper to your taste.
  7. Stir through the cooked spaghetti. Finish with some chopped flat-leaf parsley and a sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan.

By Keith Kendrick

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Herbed rack of lamb with courgette gratin

I don’t mind hospitals. I always suspect people who say melodramatically “Oh I HATE hospitals!”are angling to tell you a story about how they broke their leg when they were nine and had to go to hospital and it was just really, laike, super-traumatising.

People who have had a really terrible time in hospital, watched family members die, contracted MRSA, been operated on while still awake etc., tend not to want to re-live the experience by telling you about it.

I’m not saying I love hospitals: I don’t want to, like, go on holiday to a hospital, but I don’t mind them. So when on Friday morning the GP told me that I had to take Sam to the Royal Free as quickly as I could because his temperature was through the roof, his heart was dancing a disco beat and he was breathing faster than Mo Farah on the home straight, I wasn’t too fussed. Fine, I thought. Hospital. Lovely paediatricians to make Sam better feel nice no more crying.

And I still didn’t mind throughout that whole day while I sat in the kiddie A&E with poor pathetic, hot Sam as the (really nice) nurses and (really charming) doctor made him repeatedly scream his head off by sticking things in his ears and down his throat and up his nose and taking blood samples and chest X-Rays.

But then after seven or so hours – I didn’t even feel them go by, I am very good at waiting – we were sent up to the children’s ward and given a room. We couldn’t go home, they said, until they had seen Sam smile (ha!) and his temperature had come down to normal.

I looked around the room and out of the window as dusk started to fall over Hampstead. Away from the roar and chaos of A&E, which I had grown to think of as home, it was so quiet. So lonely. I looked at Pond Street, the steep hill I drive up and down at least once a week. I looked around the clean but shabby room, at the green and blue metal-barred cot, at the parent bed, which had a mattress that was like a load of bricks padded with some old carpet, a few slices of wonder loaf scattered about on top then covered with a sheet.

Then I thought about Sam’s nursery at home, where I have been spending the last few sleepless, fretful nights with its soft cosy beds, clean bathroom and tasteful wallpaper, everything smelling sweetly of Persil. I thought about the prospect of being denied having dinner, in my own kitchen, with my husband. Worst of all, my iPhone battery was running out and I hadn’t brought a charger. And I thought: “Even if I have to grab Sam and make a run for it disguised as an old washerwoman I need to get out of this fucking place.”

The absolutely delightful nurse, who had immediately given me a cup of tea, a sandwich and a muffin as I arrived, (they don’t do that at the Portland, I tell you), and the consultant came round and said “It’s a really bad virus. So, no antibiotics unless the throat swab comes back positive on Monday. Now it’s just about waiting for the virus to work its way out, managing his fever in the meantime, which we can do here, or…” they didn’t need to finish the sentence. I had shoved my paltry belongings back in my horrible TopShop holdall, stuffed Sam on top, said my fond farewells and was in the parking lot waiting for my husband within about six minutes.

My husband had repeatedly offered to go out and get a curry for dinner but I just didn’t feel like having a big stinking pile of food. I needed to wash the Free (God bless it, the people who go to work there are truly sent from Heaven to do His work) out of my hair and eat something pure and holy, like sushi.

But I didn’t have any sushi, so we ended up eating a bizarre dinner consisted of an entire Epoisse and two rounds of black pudding with fried apple slices.

Which was delicious, but I’d much rather have had (if not sushi) a thing we had the previous evening, which was the titular herbed rack of lamb with courgette gratin.

A butcher has opened at the top of our road, a really proper one and it has changed my life. My husband is hugely squeamish about where meat and fish come from and so we only eat a very narrow range of things from Waitrose: chicken, certain sorts of salmon, bacon, extremely expensive free-range beef. Even then he complains about it not coming from a proper butcher. There is a butcher on the high street but it’s out of my way and he once sold me some bad chicken and I am still annoyed about it.

So now one a good butcher has opened – Meat NW5 is its catchy name – we have been able to have pretty much anything for dinner. I’ve gone slightly nuts, I go every morning after dropping Kitty off at nursery and I think they’re a bit scared that I might be in love with one of them.

But the thing is I can go in and buy 2 chipolatas for Kitty’s tea, 120g of best stewing beef for Sam’s puree and then some lamb sweetbreads and a small rack of lamb for dinner with my fusspot husband.

No more spare sausages or chicken thighs hanging about in the fridge. Just go, get only what you want, cook it that night. Then buy 400 packs of bog roll and deodorant and Cheerios on Ocado every now and again. Ha ha ha! It’s like being handed loads of time and money.

A rack of lamb is a bit 2002 and I don’t actually think I’ve had it since then but it is a lovely thing and I did it like this with a courgette gratin, which was AMAZING.

For the rack of lamb

1 rack of lamb
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 large handful fresh breadcrums
assorted soft herbs – thyme, mint, oregano, rosemary – whatever you like, a small handful
some lemon zest?
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven as hot as it will go

1 brown the lamb all over for about 4 minutes in some oil and set aside to cool for a few minutes

2 Whiz up your breadcrumbs with the herbs and lemon zest, a large pinch of salt and a few turns of the pepper grinder

3 spread the lamb with the mustard and then pack on the breadcrumb mixture

4 All the recipes said put the lamb in the oven at 220C for 12 minutes and so I did that and it came out actually fucking cold in the middle. I mean, I know it’s fine to eat rare lamb but come the fuck on. Giles and I ended up agreeing that for a rack of 4 chops or more you should put it in at 220C for 25 minutes.

For the courgette gratin

3 courgettes
200 ml double cream
salt and pepper
1 handful of breadcrumbs
1 large handful of parmesan cheese

1 Slice your courgettes to the thickness of a £1 coin (have a look at a coin because it’s thinner than you think it is), put them on a baking tray and cover them in olive oil and salt and pepper. Stick them in at the top of the oven at 180C for about 10 minutes.

2 Get yourself a dish that will take all the courgettes. Shake them in, add more salt and pepper – you could also crush in a bit of garlic or other herbs if you like – toss them about, then pour over some double cream. I used I think about 200 ml but basically you just want the courgettes to be lying in a medium-bath of cream. Not a small pool and not absolutely drowning.

3 Pack on top of the courgettes your breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. Back for 25 min at 180C

And, look, here is Sam this afternoon. Right as rain – sort of. Still not really smiling, but no need to worry.

Grilled Harrisa Lamb Chops

I love the Mediterranean flavors of these grilled lamb loin chops marinated with fresh lemon juice, garlic, cumin and harissa.

We LOVE lamb chops in my house; I probably make them twice a month but I wanted to try something different and use up my jar of Mina Harissa so I thought it would be fantastic marinated over these lamb chops (and I was right). I served this with a simple salad and made my skinny tzaziki [1]to go along with it put you can also serve this with pilaf on the side for a quick light Mediterranean inspired meal.

If you don’t like lamb I’m sure this would be a great marinade on a lean steak such as flank.

Calculating loin lamb chops are a little tricky because they only provide you the nutrition for the meat, and since these are on the bone, I cut a few chops off the bone to see what the meat weighed and found the bone weighed about 1 oz, so I subtracted 8 oz from the total weight since I’m not eating the bone. My chops weren’t very large and sizes will vary so you may want to weigh yours to be accurate.

If you don’t have a grill or grill pan, you can also cook them in a skillet or under the broiler. Enjoy!

Grilled Harissa Lamb Chops
gordon-ramsay-recipe.com
Servings: 4 • Size: 2 chops • Old Points: 4 pts • Weight Watcher Points+: 4 pt
Calories: 200 • Fat: 8 g • Carb: 2 g • Fiber: 1 g • Protein: 29 g • Sugar: 1 g
Sodium: 149 mg (without salt) • Cholest: 91 mg

Ingredients:

  • 8 lamb loin chops on the bone, about 3-1/2 ounces each, all fat trimmed off
  • 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 4 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 3/4 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tbsp prepared Harrisa (purchased or homemade, I used Mina Harissa[2])
  • kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

Place the lamb chops in a large bowl and squeeze the lemon juice over them. Add the crushed garlic, cumin, Harissa and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate at least 1 hour, or as long as overnight.

Spray the grill rack or a grill pan with oil; preheat the grill or grill pan to medium-high heat.

Grill the chops about 4 to 6 minutes on each side, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the side of each chop registers 145°F for medium-rare, or longer if you like your meat more well done.

References

  1. ^ skinny tzaziki (www.gordon-ramsay-recipe.com)
  2. ^ Mina Harissa (www.amazon.com)

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