Colorado lamb loin chops waiting to get turned into dinner. These tiny little porterhouses are really delicious but often overlooked. Just be careful cooking them as it can be difficult to get a nice, even sear without going above medium rare.

Lamb and sweet potatoes with Madras curry. This is a delicious and very easy fall curry… easy because the curry comes from a jar. This isn’t something I would normally post on this blog, but I have to give credit to Maya Kaimal curries and simmering sauces. Everything I’ve picked up from this vendor so far at Whole Foods has been good. The Madras curry, in particular, is really very good and I appreciate the fact that it’s not loaded with sodium like many other pre-made curry sauces.

Just sauté some onions, brown bite-sized pieces of lamb, then throw in the sauce and sweet potatoes. Simmer for 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are soft but not mushy.

Lamb saddle roast from Bryan Flannery. On day two of holiday eating, Christmas Eve dinner was centered around this lovely chunk of lamb. A saddle roast prepared this way is essentially the entire loin deboned, folded up, and tied into a roast. It’s a slightly fatty, tender, and flavorful piece of meat, so it’s really easy to cook with good results which was the goal of the meal for this evening. This was eventually served with goat cheese potato gratin and washed down with a 2004 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select. Shafer’s HSS is one of my favorite wines, and this vintage is in a beautiful place right now. I’m sure it will get better with more age, but right now it’s everything that I love about California wine.

Roasted rack of lamb, acorn squash orzo, and pan roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon. The only thing that needs commenting on here is the acorn squash orzo. I was talking with a couple of friends this morning about all of the squash available in greenmarkets and CSAs and what to do with it. I’m a big fan of orzo and there’s a sort-of famous Babbo pumpkin orzo recipe that can be adapted to most flavorful squashes. Batali uses honey and balsamic to flavor his, but I think you should use whatever seasonings you like with that particular squash. It’s pretty easy:

Roast then puree the squash with whatever seasoning you like. Combine it with boiling chicken stock (or veggie stock if you must) and add orzo. Keep reducing and adding stock until the orzo has done. Season with salt and pepper. That’s it.

Wine pairing for this was 2008 Myriad Rutherford Cab. This is a delicious cab made for drinking early. It’s young, but the mouthfeel is so soft that it’s hard to resist now.

A butcher/ artist at Florence Meat Market cleaving then french-ing a rack of lamb for my dinner. I’ll post the finished product later this week, but it usually comes out something like this.

The Breslin Lamb Burger—for real, not my version. Now you see why there are no previous pics of this on here; it’s so dark in the restaurant that the only source of light for iPhone photography is this mini-lantern from the table (I don’t use flash in restaurants). That and after waiting for 1.5 hours for a table, it’s just too hard not to devour the burger the instant it’s set down in front of you. How was it? The wait at The Breslin is annoying, but the bar is great and the burger so good I’m willing to put up with it.

Roasted rack of lamb with orzo. The lamb from Florence Meat Market is really good so I like to keep it simple. I just seasoned, seared, roasted, then topped it with chopped parsley. This orzo is also easy and delicious. Sauté onions until soft in the same pan the lamb was seared in with some olive oil and butter. Add orzo and cook for a couple of minutes, meanwhile bring a few cups of chicken stock to a simmer. Add stock a little at a time, like when cooking risotto, until orzo is al dente. Finally, add heavy cream and parmesan and stir until thick and creamy, then stir in fresh parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Mini lamb burgers with thrice-cooked fries.

First, the burgers: More or less the same as the Breslin knock-off lamb burgers I’ve made before. The burgers were “mini” partly for fun, and mostly because the only decent rolls I could find last minute were small Balthazar brioche rolls. Instead of leg of lamb, this time I tried shoulder—the shoulder made for a “more lamb-y” tasting burger, but was a little less tender. A reasonable trade off, and I’m not sure which I like better.

The fries were not my usual at-home french fry—Cooks Illustrated Easy Fries, but instead are a higher effort, geeky fry recipe created by Kenji at Serious Eats. I’m calling them Kenji Fries, and they are every bit as awesome as he promises. The basic method is to simmer the potatoes with vinegar, quickly fry them, then freeze them before giving them their second fry. This recipe has three great aspects to it: 1) the vinegar in the simmering step keeps the fries in good shape, even when quite tender. 2) It seems to be pretty tolerant to mistakes such as under- or over-cooking during the first fry. 3) This is the best—despite it being more net work than easy fries, you can do steps one and two way ahead of time (in large quantities if you like) and have fries on hand in the freezer always ready to go.

My knock-off of the lamb burger from The Breslin. This is such a great burger—leg of lamb is ground fresh with parsley, onion, and black pepper, sprinkled with salt, cooked to a crispy medium rare, and served on a sourdough roll with baby lettuce, onion, a slice of good feta, and lemon-cumin mayo.

Lamb ragu from braised lamb shanks. This is the last of three shanks, about to be deboned, shredded, and added back into the tomato sauce. If you have a few hours, this is a very easy way to make a better than average Italian red sauce.