On a cold winter's day with a spittle of rain in the air, the best place to be is in the kitchen with the creative thoughts of a homemade meal. Gerry had found a recipe for marinated lambchops, Indian style, that he had a hankering to make. Though he often cooks the whole meal and rarely uses a recipe or a cookbook, the NY Jets were playing and so he thought it would be a good quick dish to serve after the game. I wanted to help with the meal and so I flew to the cookbooks to find some complimentary side dishes that were within my creative capability. I found a lentil recipe that would use up the bag of red lentils that have been occupying space in the cabinet for quite some time. It was called chana dahl (sounds like china doll?) with cucumbers and seemed pretty easy. I also found a recipe for warm spicy yoghurt, which made me think of some fabulous dish we had in an Indian restaurant once that looked like a caramelized curdled milk and was quite delicious. I've been in a baking mood lately, and although I recently made some delicious oatmeal currant cookies, the first batch were ruined because I forgot to add the oatmeal. When the pancake like cookies came out of the oven, I realized my mistake and scraped them into a bowl and mixed the broken cookies with raw oats. It looked like granola when it cooled and so I thought I would use the mistake in a pie... a custard pie. With our game plan in mind we went to the store for the ingredients and upon returning home I went to get ready to visit my grand-daughter as planned. Before I could get ready for the visit, Gerry had his lamb chops marinating as if nothing had occurred. Off we went to see our little Annabel, who was contented to sleep in our arms as we passed her back and forth. At 3 PM we made it home in time for the football kick-off. I got busy with my recipes while Gerry watched the game, giving me hints of how our team was doing by yells and claps. I made my custard pie using fat-free lactaid, cut the sugar in half, and when it was almost set, I added my cookie granola for some extra pizazz. The crust got a little overcooked because it took almost double the time to set than if I followed the directions and used whole milk. No disaster... it was firm and golden and looked pretty good. While the baking was in progress I put the lentils to boil and in no time I had a sudsy spill-over mess on the stove. At the time I was in deep concentration over the peeling and grating of garlic and ginger, the de-seeding of cucumbers and tiny little chilies, as well as the measuring of turmeric, coriander, cumin seeds... an endless combination of spices. Needless to say the two recipes I chose along with my "simple" dessert cost me the entire football game. I was sweating and swearing and had a big mess going on. At one point Gerry came into the kitchen and just shook his head as I was "fighting" with an onion using a steak knife ( I admit I'm scared to death of his chef knives). I managed to get the kitchen in order in time for Gerry to deftly fry and oven finnish his chops. He plated them on a bed of mesclun and whipped together a mint sauce as well. As you can see they looked spectacular... and tasted divine. My lentils were spicy and delicious, and the warm yogurt with onions and chilis was really hot, but really good. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to look like egg-salad (you just can't get a fine mince of onion with a steak knife), but scooping it up with delicious warm Naan bread, you didn't really have time to think about the looks. The pie was served hours after dinner with a little whipped cream, and although time consuming for me, the candle-lit meal was a delicious success (in spite of a Jets loss).* Photo compliments to Gerry
