Rack of Lamb: Moroccan Spice

A lit­tle cook­ing diver­sion: A Moroc­can Spiced Rack of Lamb.  I have some more stand-mix­er bak­ing to do, but my most recent attempt was lack-lus­ter.  More about that when I get it right.  This arti­cle is about our new year’s eve meal.  I want­ed to do some­thing fair­ly spe­cial withtout being too expen­sive.  As these “french cut” rack-of-lambs were on spe­cial, they fit the bill.

A stock attempt at lamb … rose­mary, maybe some dill, olive oil … it seemed below these won­der­ful cuts.  I spent some time talk­ing with my sis­ter about this and she google-texted me a recipe from some­where — I can’t exact­ly tell, but it sound­ed won­der­ful.  How­ev­er, it was new years eve and it want­ed pome­gran­ate juice.  I don’t keep that around.  Look­ing at the recipe, I decid­ed that the juice was used for it’s sweet­ness.  I decid­ed to sub­sti­tute “Water­loo Dark” … which is a Cana­di­an beer with a sweet almost can­dy-like taste.  I also had some “Mad Tom IPA” that I’ve been try­ing to find recipes to get rid of it in — but it has a decid­ed­ly bit­ter fin­ish, so I expect­ed it would­n’t be appro­pri­ate here.  While I don’t like Mad Tom, Musko­ka Cream Ale is the defin­i­tive Cream Ale for me.

The recipe also called for a shal­lot.  I used a reg­u­lar yel­low onion … although in hind­sight, I could have used a small­er one or half of one.  Depends on how you like onion.  I diced the onion the Ram­sey way… go look that up … he’s an excel­lent teacher when he isn’t rant­i­ng and rav­ing at some­one.  This recipe also reflects the gar­lic I used.  We love gar­lic here … might not be to oth­er’s taste.

The sides here were sim­ple steamed fresh broc­coli and a baked pota­to.  We do the pota­toes in the microwave first and then put them in the oven.  The rack of lamb only requires 30 min­utes in the oven … and this is not near­ly enough time for a good baked potato.

”,“3 cloves gar­lic, minced”,“1 tbsp butter”,“2 tsp cumin seeds”,“2 tsp corian­der seeds”,“1\/2 stick cinnamon”,“2 tsp paprika”,“1\/4 tsp tumeric”,“2 one-pound racks lamb, french cut”,“1 tbsp olive oil”,“some salt”,“some pepper”],“recipeInstructions”:[“Start the sauce by com­bin­ing the beer, chick­en broth, onion and gar­lic in a small saucepan.”,“Reduce the sauce on medi­um high heat for about 20 min­utes. You want to end up with 1\/2 to 3\/4 cup of sauce.”,“Preaheat your oven to 425F.”,“Toast the cumin seads, car­roway seeds and cin­na­mon in a small fry­pan on medi­um heat. You may or may not have the seads and sticks. You can’t fry the spice pow­der (well… of course you can, but the result is not good). If you just have the pow­dered spices, skip this.”,“Put seeds (if you have them) and sticks (if you have them) into a spice or cof­fee grinder. Zap them a bunch to make spice pow­der. See… you just made toast­ed spice pow­der. Go you.”,“Combine all the spices in a bowl and mix.”,“Get out a shal­low oven tray. You’re going to coat the lamb with olive oil and then spices, so sides on the tray will help (at bit) keep­ing the oven clean. Then again, maybe you like the heady aro­ma when you fire up the self-clean­ing oven. Just make sure you’re doing that at non-peak pow­er times.”,“So… yeah… too much com­men­tary in that note. Coat the lamb with olive oil (makes spices stick) and sea­son with salt and pepper.”,“shake and sprin­kle spices onto the lamb. I end­ed up with quite a bit extra. Put it in a bag­gy for some­thing else. Labelled \“Moroc­can Spice\” for lack of any­thing I’ll actu­al­ly remem­ber. Pret­ty much my moth­er’s influ­ence here: can’t throw away any­thing good. I’m still eat­ing the last batch of bread that we’re not talk­ing about — it’s way too thick and dry (even stalled the stand-mix­er), but I can’t bring myself to throw it out.”,“Notes here say to roast the lamb until the inte­ri­or is 135F. We took a chance and just did it for 30 minutes.”,“Bring the sauce back to a sim­mer if you turned it off at some point. Melt in the but­ter. Add more but­ter if you like (I did). This is basi­cal­ly a sweet-but­ter-beer sauce. What a nice bunch of words to string togeth­er sweet-but­ter-beer sauce.”,“Spoon the sauce over the Racks of Lamb.”]}