Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
Today, I’m continuing my series on California Cuisine and food on fire! I hope you enjoyed my first few posts on California Cuisine, its roots and how it has influenced the way we cook and eat. For the next week or two, I will be focusing on grilled foods, which was an important technique in the California Cuisine movement. Today, I’m featuring grilled lamb chops:
I always make these chops when we go camping. I love to go camping and there is just something about cooking in the great out-of-doors that grabs hold of my primal instincts and makes my cave-girl heart sing…or growl…I never know which–I don’t have a very good voice.
The first time I made them in the wild was when we went camping in Yellowstone. Yellowstone is quite possibly my favorite place on the planet. I made these on our first night there. Mr. Stone Soup always accuses me of wanting to stay one too many nights camping–which means three nights. Sadly, he is generally correct, as something catastrophic usually happens on that third night. Yellowstone was no exception. We had two beautiful nights of camping, the first night with these delicious herb-crusted lamb chops, the second with burgers and beans. The third night, I was going to make steaks, when the heavens opened up. The rain didn’t even give us any warning–it just started to pour…and pour…and pour. Wave after wave of torrential rain, thunder and lightning. Our campsite became a small inland lake that threatened to carry our little SUV away. We had to wade through several inches of water to break camp. It was all we could do to toss our gear and dogs into the back end of the SUV and flail away like drenched, drowning rats escaping from a flooded street drain.
But the memories of the food remain.
I was inspired to create this recipe many, many years ago by a Martha Stewart tv show I saw once. I didn’t get the recipe, I only knew that she made herb-crusted lamb chops. This is my homage to that recipe. When I make this dish when camping, if the campfire grate is in good enough shape that I can clean it up, I will grill the chops. However, I usually use my camping cast iron and sear the chops and then finish them off with the lid on the skillet to act like an oven. Grilling will give you that wonderful smokey flavor, but either method works fine. When at a campsite, instead of using a mortar and pestle to grind up the dry herbs, I put all the herbs and spices into a ziplock bag and pound them into dust using the tent-stake mallet. Camping is all about making do…like being, well–a Stone Soup Cook! I hope you enjoy these grilled lamb chops with a nice glass of merlot and someone you love!
Join me next week when I’ll continue to share recipes for food on fire–until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
