First, I had the partially used can of cocoa powder that has been sitting in my pantry for rather long time.  But then I also had a rather large supply of various types of dark chocolate.  I stress dark chocolate because it really isn’t possible for milk chocolate to be sitting around my house without me eating it… but I digress.  I had 4 bars of chocolate including Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate, Valrhona Extra Bitter chocolate, and two different types of Ghirardelli chocolate bars.  The Ghirardelli chocolate bars are great on their own so I decided against using them in my Sweet Heart creation because then Husband wouldn’t get to nibble on them next time he had a craving. Although I must admit I thought the raspberry would be a great addition.  Rather than choose between the other two chocolates I decided to use half of each in my creation.

With ingredients in hand the question became what to make.  Brownies came to mind first but then ice cream started screaming in my head making the choice easy. (Yes I realize it is winter but as I've said before and I'm sure I'll say again there is never a bad time to have ice cream!) But ultimately I choose a treat ice cream alternative that Husband and I have recently enjoyed quite a bit:  tart frozen yogurt.  My recipe for tart frozen yogurt is a variant of a frozen yogurt recipe from Peggy Fallon’s Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts called Double Chocolate Frozen Yogurt.  But you can really make tart frozen yogurt from whatever your favorite frozen yogurt recipe is by making a few adjustments.  First, you must use European style yogurt since this adds the overwhelming tartness to the yogurt. I also decrease the amount of sugar to fine tune the level of tartness we enjoy.  The result is an interesting and tart yogurt that, for whatever reason, Husband and I really like.  I used my leftover cocoa powder and an 8oz half-n-half mixture of Ghirardelli Bittersweet chocolate and  Valrhona Extra bitter chocolate to create Chocolate Chocolate Chip Tart Frozen Yogurt – yum!

Day One

This recipe is not quite as elaborate as the first recipe – it only took 2 days to prepare not 3.  As with last time, day one began with shopping, but the shopping was less difficult as we only needed to buy a rack of lamb and a few vegetables.  Everything else, including the beans we already had on hand.  Once we were home from shopping the only task for the day was to cut the meat from the rack of lamb and assemble it into a plastic wrapped log with a few herbs.  In other words, this was mostly a task for Husband since I don’t particularly care for butchering meat.   The process was quick and in no time at all he was wrapping the meat into the plastic wrap log.  Once the meat was wrapped in the plastic wrap, the recipe then required the assembled log to sit overnight in the fridge to marinate.  The reason for this was not obvious since the meat only had a couple of herbs and garlic wrapped with it, but it did give us a chance to break-up the cooking time so that was good.

Although Husband prepared the meat quickly he did run into a rather big problem.  The recipe calls for 2 1-pound racks of lamb that are supposed to yield 8 - 10 ounces of lamb meat each.  But we only got 10 ounces total out of our racks of lamb which meant we only had about half of the meat that the recipe called for.  Sure we could have gone out for more, but we decided this would simply mean we’d have extra sauce to use another time so we proceeded with the recipe using only half of the meat.  Unlike the Braised Short Ribs that lasted us four glorious nights this meal would only last us one. 

Day Two

Day two was split into two tasks.  The first was to make the bean and vegetable portion of the meal and the second was to cook the meat.  Both were relatively easy but the beans did take several hours to cook.  The beans cooked in a large pot that contained the leftover rack of lamb bones, some vegetables and herbs.  The bones and herbs were wrapped with cheesecloth to create rather large bouquet garnis.  The resulting bean mixture was then strained.  The cheesecloth contents were tossed and the beans transformed into a dip.  The sauce was served with the lamb. 

Sounds easy but we did run into a couple of snags – which we overcame.  First up was assembling the bouquet garnis.  Easy except that the first time we wrapped them we forgot a key ingredient – garlic.  Fortunately I caught this because I re-read the recipe before we proceeded.  Second was that the recipe called for sprigs of rosemary and thyme.  While Michel Richard defined how many sprigs he did not define the size of a sprig. Not sure about you but ‘sprig’ isn’t a real exact quantity measurement for me.  Based on the picture in the book we approximated how much Michel Richard really meant when he said sprig.  I think we did ok with the thyme but Husband felt we had too much rosemary in the final result.  We used rosemary from our garden, so perhaps it was stronger than what Michel Richard used?

Mid-Day Chef Snack

One nice thing about this recipe is that it produces the bean dip earlier in the day before the whole meal is ready – or at least that is how we timed it.  This gave us a wonderful mid-day snack of bean dip on some pita chips.  The bean dip was absolutely delicious! It had just a very slight flavor of the lamb as well as flavorings from the various herbs used.   Of course it is a rather elaborate, not to mention expensive, way to prepare bean dip.  Sadly, I don’t think we’ll be having it again anytime soon. Aside from the bean dip, there were the lamb bones with bits of lamb meat that came out of the bouquet garnis. Depending on what you like to eat, this is also a wonderful mid-day chef snack!

Measure once, twice or as many times as it takes

The last part of the meal involved poaching the lamb by slowly heating the meat in a pot of water at 140 degrees.  We’ve never poached meat like this so it was a bit interesting to do, but overall, it was pretty easy except for some minor equipment problems.   Since 140 degrees isn’t very hot, we used quite a bit of ice throughout the process to keep the water at the right temperature.  After the specified time we stuck our meat thermometer into the lamb to measure the temperature which was only about 100 degrees.  Hmmm.  OK back in the pot it went for another 20 minutes.  Then we checked again – ok now its 105.  At what point do you decide something is wrong?  We made the call then because our side dishes were ready and we were hungry. 

Eating undercooked lamb wasn’t an option, but questioning why it wasn’t cooking was.  Even though the thermometer we were using was brand new (or perhaps it was because it was brand new) we decided to verify its measuring accuracy. We have an old glass meat thermometer which we prefer not to use unless we must (mercury, glass and meat – not a great combination right?), but in this case it seemed reasonable to check out the temperature with it.  The glass thermometer read 140 – hmmm?  One more test – what temperature was the water with the two different meat thermometers?  Ah ha! The new thermometer thought the water was 105 whereas the old glass/mercury standby said 140 just like the candy thermometer said.  Great, dinner was ready!

The Result

The result?  Delicious! If you're looking for something other than a traditional rack of lamb or lamb chop this is it. We served the lamb with some simple mashed potatoes and braised leeks.  We choose braised leeks to use the leeks leftover from the lamb recipe that only used one leek green.  But honestly, the leeks were amazing and so easy to make that they are now a new favorite that I can’t wait to make again.  Overall, this Happy Meal wasn’t quite as great as the braised short ribs, but then again lamb isn’t my favorite meat.  Still it was awesome and a recipe I’d gladly make for special guests in the future.

And next we'll tackle... 

Next month we’re planning on making some mushroom centric Happy in the Kitchen dishes for a change from the meat centric ones we’ve tried so far…. Can’t wait to taste how they turn out!

Drew from How To Cook Like Your Grandmother in Euclid, Ohio started with half a leftover baked potato, some leftover onion, and peppers.  He cleverly added some Polish hot sausage and Voilà! he created Polish hot sausage hash browns.