Food in Boston

First, a warning to any vegetarians - you might want to skip this post.

Time to blow my cover: I know next to nothing about buying or cooking meat. What I do know is that I like eating locally produced meat grown on small farms. Happily enough, Stillman’s farm has started bringing lamb and pork to their JP farmer’s market, and I’ve finally had a chance to try some. The lamb chops in question, straight from the market:

Not having cooked much meat, my first task was to figure out what the right technique would be. After consulting The Joy of Cooking I was convinced that broiling was the way to go, but I wasn’t wild about the preparations they discuss. A little web surfing produced a marinade recipe from the CIA that I was able to approximate with ingredients on hand: soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and pepper.

Half an hour of marinading later, and we were off to the broiler. After a few minutes, some of the confusion I’d experienced earlier about just what kind of cut I had was dispelled, when I realized that what I’d assumed was a big chunk of lamb was actually four smaller cuts frozen together. Oops. That would explain why the bones came in at those odd angles.

While I probably would have been able to cook the chops more evenly if I’d had half an idea what I was dealing with from the outset, erring a bit on the side of caution resulted in four chops that were safely cooked and totally delicious. Some credit goes to the CIA-inspired marinade, and some to the peace of mind that comes with knowing a bit about where my food was from, but I think most of my satisfaction was due to it being some plain tasty meat. (That’s one of four pieces pictured; one was in my stomach, and the other two were finishing under the broiler)