My Great American Road Trip – Colorado

I made a mother-fucking rack of lamb! Sorry for the salty language, but in my whole life I never thought that is something I’d do. Or even think about doing! Or, that I would even be capable of it if I wanted to do it. But I did it and it was good!

Rocky Mountain Oysters come up a lot when you’re googling what to eat that is iconically Colorado. And I have a friend with the theory that you could batter and deep fry a shoe and it would be delicious. Rocky mountain oysters are cowboy fare, and who doesn’t like a cowboy, and you can even get them at the ball game, but there are limits to what I’ll do for this blog and eating a testicle is way beyond where I’ve drawn the line.

So, the might Colorado lamb called my name. I have been putting off even thinking about what would be involved until the morning came and I had to deal with it. I woke to the news that we’d had the all-time highest single day infection rate in the country, on the very day that I let strangers touch me for the first time in months (at the hair salon, don’t get alarmed).  After a long morning walk, socially distant from my friend Jack, to shake off the sense of impending doom, I ventured to the Fresh Market for a couple lamb chops. Turns out you have to buy the whole rack. I debated scrapping the lamb idea and making a Denver omelet, but a couple deep breaths later, I decided that a deep dive into the cooking pool would be my rebellion against the coming dystopia. I left with my rack, (and my rack of lamb).

I looked at it on the counter through the morning and early afternoon before deciding I had to get out again. I checked the weather – the sunny skies on my app did not mirror the gray clouds in the sky, but, trusting technology, I headed off for a quick kayak.  The kayak guy would not let me on the water because of impending weather. Summing my best “karen” I pulled out my phone to argue with him, and realized I’d been looking at the weather in theBerkshires,  as has been my coping mechanism for not actually being there.

Once home, I decided to tackle the inevitable meal prep, when I remembered a crucial fact. You can’t have lamb without mint jelly! Not wanting to go out again, and since I recently invested in a mint plant, I decided to make my own. Well, you can’t. Mint jelly requires gelatin for one thing, and I don’t have that. Also – it needs like a day in the fridge before you eat it. But I did find a recipe for a simple mint sauce. A whole bunch of mint leaves in a bowl, some sugar and cider vinegar in equal amounts, and a little s&p to taste. Pour some boiling water over that and let it steep.

With that sorted it was time to face the meat. I threw some garlic, so so much garlic, lemon zest, rosemary, and thyme in the blender with some olive oil and then rubbed the whole rack down with that. Then let it sit for a couple hours.

It goes in to a 450 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until it’s about 125 degrees with a meat thermometer. I have one of those. Like the vast majority of my cooking supplies it was my mother’s, and there’s a fairly large chance that it was her mother’s, but it works well enough to keep me from buying a new one (this is actually the first time I’ve ever used it but it worked.

This is what my lamb looked like!

Ok – it didn’t look like that at all. It looked like this.

I’m not a very good photographer, but that’s what you call PERFECTLY COOKED.

The lamb was so tender and flavorful that it made up for my deep disappointment at not having emerald colored mint jelly.

I had a lamb and black bean chimichanga for lunch the next day!