My Birthday Gift to Marc

Dinner tonight was a belated birthday gift to Marc. I wanted to do something special for him, but I've been so tired lately! Today, I had extra time, so I spent it in the kitchen all day to make some of Marc's favorite foods!

I decided to make French onion soup, lamb loin chops with a mint pesto, roasted garlic red potatoes, and roasted asparagus. The French onion soup is a LONG recipe! I added it first!

The side dishes had to be made first! I preheated my oven to 425 degrees F. While I waited, I minced 5 cloves of garlic (we love garlic - you can use more or less) and quartered or cut into eighths about 2 pounds of washed baby red potatoes.

Washed baby red potatoes 

I added the potatoes to a pyrex casserole dish and liberally drizzled them with extra virgin olive oil. Yes, I know that you are not suppose to use EVOO in the oven when it's over 350 degrees F, but I do! I love the extra flavor that it gives. I added the garlic, coarse Kosher salt, and pepper.

Mixed potatoes, garlic, salt, and extra virgin olive oil.

I hand-mixed them so that they were all covered with the seasonings. I covered the casserole with aluminum foil and placed them in the oven for about an hour.

While the potatoes began to cook, I started working on my roasted asparagus. This is an adapted recipe from Ina Garten. After rinsing my asparagus, I broke off the woody ends. I laid them on an aluminum foil-lined cookie sheet and drizzled them with extra-virgin olive oil and salt! 

I made sure that they were entirely covered! I put them into the oven on a lower shelf. 

These need to cook about 25 minutes. Keep an eye on them so that they don't burn.

Asparagus with olive oil and salt.

If you time it right, you can pull both the asparagus and potatoes out at the same time! 

But beware, the potatoes aren't done quite yet!

Now it was time for the main course - a lamb chop with mint pesto. The original recipe comes from Guy Fieri on the Food Network. I changed a few things, mainly that I didn't grill the chops and I used pistachios instead of pine nuts in the pesto. I don't grill - that's Marc's territory and I'm not making him do his own lamb chops! And I do NOT like pine nuts. To me, they are bitter and that's it - no other flavor profile at all! I know that Alton Brown makes a pistachio pesto, so it isn't unheard of to use pistachios for a pesto!

As I waited on the sides, I dried my chops and made the rub to go on them. It was simple, mixing together 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. I rubbed the chops with olive oil and the rub mixture.



This is enough for 8 chops, but I only had 4 (2 per person) so I decided to save the rest for a later date! I let the chops sit in the rub at room temperature for about 15 minutes, until I was ready to use them!

I made the pesto quickly, throwing a few cloves of garlic and 1/4 cup pistachios in my food processor and pulsing. I added all of the herbs, about 3/4 c each of basil, mint, and parsley and chopped for 30 seconds! I added 1/3 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano and chopped for about another minute. I then drizzled in about 2/3 of a cup of extra virgin olive oil into the mixture while the processor is running. 

You may want to use more or less olive oil, based on the consistency you like your pesto! 

Pesto

The potatoes and asparagus were ready for me by this point! My next step was to broil the French onion soup, so I set the oven to low broil and added my crocks about 8" from the heat source! 

After the soup was out (and served), I dropped the temperature back to 450 degrees F and placed the potatoes, now uncovered, into the oven for an additional 15 minutes (while we ate the soup).

As I took the soup out of the oven, I added olive oil to my Calphalon Unison 12" sauté pan (with the sear technology) over medium-high heat. After eating the soup, I came back to work on my lamb chops while Marc digested! I added the chops to the HOT pan (test it with water before you put in your chops) and sautéed for 3 minutes on each side, then I covered and cooked in the oven at 425 degrees F until they were medium-rare (140 degrees F for gourmet cooking, 150 degrees F for USDA). 

Notice that many of the chops had two rib bones in them! They were very thick!

This oven step took about 5 additional minutes, but my chops were 1-1/2" thick. 

Your chops may not even need to go into the oven, depending on their thickness!

At about the same time that the chops were ready, the potatoes were ready! It was great! I'm not a lamb fan, but these were actually pretty good, especially with the pistachios in the pesto!