A home cooked meal

The occasion was a very good friend of mine was in town. After offering to take him to any of the nice restaurants in NY being a difficult man to please instead he opted for a home cooked meal. Given this was the friend who listened to every single one of my sob stories I thought that a home cooked meal was not to much to ask for. I was also pleased as it was a good opportunity for me to practice some of the simple things I had learnt in cooking classes.

So knowing that you can never go wrong with meat when trying to please a man I opted for lamb chops, potatoes and mushrooms.


Seared lamb chops
Knowing that men wanted to feel somewhat useful and had an affinity to meat I gave the arduous task of searing the lamb chops to GNusalim he did a very good job and the chops were delicious.





Sides - Mushrooms and potatoes
If there is one thing that always goes with chops it is sauteed potatoes. I added fresh rosemary, garlic and a pinch of salt and pepper to give the potatoes a hint of flavour having whisked some whipped cream earlier in the morning my arm was so dead that after some light sauteeing I opted to put the potatoes in the oven to complete the job. Trust me it should be men who belong in the kitchen sauteeing, whisking and lifting is hard work requiring a lot of muscle action!!!

The other quintessential side normally accompanying proteins at steakhouses were mushrooms. Wanting to keep the essence that this was essentially a mushroom dish but still needing some flavours for my mushrooms I added a dash of truffle oil, light truffle salt and dill. What better way to flavour mushrooms than with mushroom itself?





The finished product and dessert
So I need to work a little on my plating but overall it was not bad and hopefully GNusalim didn't go home with any stomach aches. Having whipped up some chocolate mousse from scratch and made chocolate truffles earlier in the day I was in the mood for fresh fruit and dairy so what better way to finish off my meal than a raspberry smoothie. We then washed this down with some of the chocolate truffles I made earlier in cooking classes.

Overall a very fun meal but the best part was still catching up with GNusalim himself.