As you may already know, I’ve been going a little crazy here in Mumbai dialing in on a ketogenic-type diet in a mostly vegetarian country. If I have to eat any more chicken, I’m going to start pecking and clucking at my Bikram students, not a good thing!
I finally took the 45 minute bumpy rick-shaw drive from my place in Andheri over to the big Nature’s Basket in Bandra, to see if I could find some more meat products to entertain myself with. I was really, really in the diet-doldrums at this point, very unusual for me.
I ended up scoring a whole smorgasbord of ingredients to make new meals with: canned sardines, roasted deli ham and turkey, imported bacon and chorizo, english pork sausages, and tiny but succulent lamb racks. I will be posting more menu items over the following week…enjoy!
What you’ll need….
For the lamb….
3 – 4 lamb ribs, (about 1 oz each), rubbed with a little bit of olive oil about an hour ahead of time, and brought up to room temperature
1 tsp olive oil
kosher salt
1 fat clove of garlic, mashed
2 tsp harissa paste (available in most supermarkets in the ethnic section)
For the vegetables…
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp red onion, small slice
4 button mushrooms, sliced
8 slices red and yellow pepper
sea salt
italian dried herbs
4 roasted cherry tomatoes
Warm up a toaster oven to 200˚ F, and place the rack on the middle. Meanwhile, heat up a non-stick fry pan with the oil, sprinkle the lamb on both sides with salt, and place evenly around the pan to brown, (about 1 1/2 minutes each side). Remove the lamb from the pan, place on a tray, and put in the toaster oven to finish cooking, about another 2 minutes tops. Add more olive oil to the pan, lower the heat a little, and add the onions, cooking for about a minute until they start to soften. Stir often to avoid sticking. Add the mushrooms and cover so that the mushrooms brown nicely but also let off their steam. This should also take about a minute both sides. Immediately add the pepper, salt and spices, cover, and cook another minute or two, stirring occasionally so that they cook evenly and the flavors mix. Remove from the pan.
The lamb should have finished cooking part-way through cooking the vegetables, and you will have pulled them from the oven and let sit for a minute or two to let the juices return to the center of the cuts. Once the vegetables are finished, rub the lamb with the mashed garlic and harissa, and plate the dish, vegetables down first, then place the lamb racks bones pointing up. You can add a few of the roasted tomatoes and voila. A tasty low carb meal is served!
(I always keep a container of roasted cherry tomatoes in the fridge when I am dialing in as they are very low carb but add a lot of flavor to almost any dish imaginable).
