It's been a couple of weeks since I cooked a 30 Minute Meal as I have been too busy for these complex meals and have been cooking REAL 30 minute meals that are still very tasty and nutritious. This recipe needed a "Rack of Lamb" which I priced at my local Foodland to be $32.99 a kilo! Yikes! The recipe also needed a "Lamb Neck Fillet" which I could not find in any supermarket, so it was time to find a good butcher and find the time to fit it in to my busy days. But as luck had it, a trip to the Toy Library with my toddler gave me the opportunity to try another newish butcher with just a short walk across the road. I managed to pay more per kilo for the rack, but could purchase a smaller amount as I was only cooking for two. As for the neck fillet, well the butcher was kind enough to cut a fillet for me, but this meant waiting, which two year olds are not the best at!!
With meat in hand I began the prep an hour before I planned to serve the meal. This included cutting up any veges, making the marinade for the meat and picking herbs. After 30 mins of prep, I started the cooking. The meal included the Rack of Lamb, plus the Neck Fillet, a Vegetable Platter, Mint Sauce, Chianti Gravy and a Chocolate Fondue.
The lamb was fine to prepare and cook and I must say, was melt in the mouth and cooked to perfection. The Vege Platter was also very nice, but not sure that I tasted bags of flavour, but hey, veges are veges.
The marinade for the meat gave a nice taste and I think it didn't really need anything else, but Jamie tells me I must make a Gravy AND a Mint Sauce, which I obediently did. My Mint Sauce looked nothing like his, although it tasted nice. His was so smooth like silk and mine was thick like bashed up mint leaves (which it was). My gravy also looked terrible as I didn't have any red wine in the house (which is a disaster in itself) so I tried to use other things like red wine vinegar and Worcester sauce to get a darker colour, but it still looked awful, so instead of putting it in a jug, I just threw it over the top of the meat when serving it up.
As for the "Chocolate Fondue"....well, I just didn't do it! To me melting some chocolate and throwing half cut fruit on a platter is not my idea of a nice desert. But I thought we should at least have the experience, so I bought some "dipping chocolate" for $2.95 and cut up 4 different fruits which I did in my prep time.
So overall, a tasty dish (my hubby certainly loved it and I think he might of had a little orgasm over the dipping chocolate) but both cuts of meat were very very fatty. I tried to cook off and cut off as much of the fat as I could, but there was no escaping it. Not cuts of meat that I will rush to buy again in a hurry.
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