by Helen
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Photo by Sarah Shatz
A&M's Testing Notes:
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1
large, ripe tomato
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1
hothouse cucumber, peeled
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1 tablespoon
capers (rinsed if salt packed)
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1/2
red onion
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1
green pepper (or red. or yellow.)
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1/2 cup
feta
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1 pinch
dried oregano
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4
stuffed grape leaves
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1 dash
kosher salt
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1 dash
finely ground black pepper
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1
extra virgin olive oil
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1
red wine vinegar
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1/2 cup
kalamata olives
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Dice the tomato, cucumber, and pepper into bite sized pieces. Thinly slice the red onion. Toss together with capers and olives, a pinch of dried oregano (but don't over do it, it gets overwhelming quickly), aggressively season with salt and pepper, and dress with olive oil and red wine vinegar to taste. Allow to sit at room temperature while you cook the lamb.
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2
lamb blade chops
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1 dash
dried oregano
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1 dash
ground coriander
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1 dash
kosher salt
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1 dash
coarsely ground black pepper. more like sand than like powder.
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20 minutes before you want to grill, pull the chops out of the fridge. Season aggressively with salt and pepper, and generously with dried oregano and ground coriander on both sides. Really press it in. Grill over a medium-high heat until nicely charred on the outside, and delightfully pink on the inside. The meat should feel tender but not soft.
Ask the hotline about this step!Divide the salad between two plates, add two stuffed grape leaves to each. Crumble half the feta over each plate. Place the hot-from-the-grill lamb over the salad, and drizzle the whole plate with high quality olive oil to finish. Enjoy!
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Chef Michael Kiss is the Cooking Coach at Whole Foods Market in Rockville, Md.
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Slicing the red onion in such delicate half moons allows the salt and vinegar of the dressing to soften the bite. It also showcases Merrill's beautiful knife skills. Indeed, much of this recipe is chopping!
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Amanda received these salt packed capers as a gift. Now that's a good friend.
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Dicing a tomato is a great way to see if your knives are appropriately sharp. If the blade slices easily through the skin (like buttah!), you're in pretty good shape. That said, remember that sharp knives are actually safer, and to keep those steels handy!
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The cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes are all chopped to similar sizes, but you can vary this if you'd like.
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As this dressing is best when it's heavy on the vinegar, instead of the usual 1:3 ratio, we used a 2:3 ratio of red wine vinegar to extra virgin olive oil.
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Though we didn't add the feta to the salad now, we did crumble it so we'd have nothing to do once the meat was grilled!
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The higher your hand from the meat, the more even the seasoning!
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As the meat was finishing up on the grill, we checked our salad. The onions had softened a bit, and the flavors had melded beautifully.
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Lucious, and rested, lamb.
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Finished. Delicious!
I keep forgetting to add a comment here, but Helen, we made this for dinner last Friday and it absolutely ROCKS. We love blade chops anyway (an underappreciated cut for sure), but the rub is fantastic, and in combination with the salad they are pure win. We'll be making this often in the summer when our local tomatoes, cukes, and peppers are in season. Thanks for a great dish!