Friday, September 12, 2008

A Homemade Anniversary Dinner with Store-bought Desserts

When you need to make something special for someone special, consider making lamb, rack of lamb! It's fairly simple to make and has a big wow factor if done right with sides like the ones I chose to serve. I served the rack of lamb with some garlicky sauteed rainbow chard and some fancy roasted red new potatoes and I made a quick sauce from reduced balsamic vinegar. If you look at the picture below, you might be wondering how I prepped those beautiful potatoes? My food styling might not be that great, but dinner certainly was! Keep scrolling...

To create the beautiful roasted potatoes pictured above, take a wooden spoon and place a small potato in the depression. With your knife, make thin, parallel slices in the potato until you hit the edges of the spoon; the spoon will prevent your knife from cutting all the way through and keep the potato 'chips' held together. Repeat for each potato, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and chopped fresh rosemary, then roast in the oven until cooked through and crispy - about 40 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

Having spent all my time preparing and cooking dinner on this night, I totally cheated on dessert. I bought a few of the pre-made tarts at Whole Foods, one blueberry crumble, one key lime pie, and one chocolaty, caramely, nutty turtle-like tart; they were all very good.



9 comments:

  1. What a guy! I don't eat lamb, but loved your potato presentation and will make them ASAP. We're getting tired of smashed potatoes anyway.

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  2. Your dinner looks delicious! I could use one of those bluberry crumble tarts right now!!!

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  3. Happy anniversary! I'm sure the dinner was wonderful.

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  4. Hi Arlene, thanks! This has definitely become my favorite potato preparation! They are easy and fun!

    Hi Meg, thank you! The Whole Foods tarts are really good. In fact, all their desserts/pastries are really good!

    Hi Ashley, thanks! I've been way behind in posting this year, my anniversary was in May!! But thank you anyway, dinner was delicious!

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  5. oooh, I'm totally going to try potatoes that way, they look fabulous!

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  6. Whole Foods always amazes me with their desserts!

    I really like your blog - very interesting. You're one of the few guys who has a decent food blog (that I've found so far anyway).

    I've just started a food blog of my own - any tips/tricks you've found useful that you'd suggest for me to really get it on it's feet?

    Have a great weekend!

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  7. Hi Lydia, I can't take all the credit - I saw the tip a few years ago in Cook's Illustrated!

    Hi Sara, good luck!

    Hi Jennifer, thank you for the compliment, and welcome to the Foodie Blogosphere! The few tips I can offer are these: be original, be thoughtful and creative, and post as often as you can, daily if your schedule allows it. Use a tool like Sitemeter.com or Google Analytics to help track your traffic and see how your post frequency affects your site traffic.

    Also, take an active part in the foodie community, which you're already doing so by leaving a note here. Visit other sites, find inspiration, and...I'll email you the rest. Good luck and thanks again!

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  8. Scott, what a good idea to cut potatoes on the spoon!!
    Answering your question, many years ago my friend used to make garlic potatoes this way, and I just remembered about it now :)

    Have a good day, Margot

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