An amazing dinner

Dinner last night was quite an affair. I never would have predicted that it would have taken this long but it was about 2 hours from start to finish. And, was it worth it? Indeed.

The Menu:

Herbed lamb kabobs - We had something similar to this at a local restaurant but I think ours tasted better. It is moist and extremely flavorful.

Roasted red pepper

Carrot salad with harissa, feta, and mint

Braised greens

Kalamata olives

Freshly cooked naan (or, probably more correctly, pita bread)

Lamb Kabobs

1 lb ground lamb (ours was from the farmer's market)

1 egg

1/2 cup bread crumbs (I'm not sure if this is ultimately necessary but the texture and consistency turned out well with this included)

1 finely minced shallot

1-2 Tbs of chopped fresh cilantro and mint

2 tsp dried parsley (I'd have used fresh if I had any)

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Mix all of the above in a large bowl - hands work the best for this - until thoroughly combined. Shape into "fingers" around skewers. You can either grill or broil at this point. We broiled last night since it was pouring. We initially had the oven's top rack as close to the top of the oven as possible. We had preheated the oven to 425 because we cooked the bread right after the meat and peppers were done and then broiled the top side of the lamb on "high" broil for about 5 minutes until it had browned. The top oven rack was then moved down to the next lower rung and the kabobs were turned over. We continued to use "high" broil and cooked for another 5 minutes until they were cooked through.

Roasted red pepper

1 large red pepper cut unto 1-2 inch chunks and broiled along with the lamb

Carrot salad from this site. I used a different harissa recipe from a Mediterranean cookbook but this recipe looks good as well. The reason the dinner took so long was I had to make the harissa from scratch. I've never made it before and it took a bit of preperation. Next time we make this dinner (and believe me we will) it will probably take about an hour less.

Partly why it's been 4 months

I haven't written on this blog for a very long time. I'd like to fully blame (if finger pointing is required) my computer, but I've also not much felt like writing somehow.

The computer saga really isn't much of a saga. I've had this dell laptop since the beginning of my residency 5 years ago. It served me fairly well (besides the hard drive going kaput in a relatively brief period of time) up until a year ago when it decided to run exceedingly slowly. I just put up with it for months. Then we got new computers at work, nice little dell laptops that actually work. So, this home computer didn't get much use for awhile. I wanted to put together a music compilation but couldn't even keep the media player from locking up while opening let alone burn a disc. The computer fix-it man put in 2 gigs of RAM and cleaned up all of the spam and put in a great anti-virus program. Now we are as good as new.

Then, last weekend, Mike's 8 year old Mac decided to give up the ghost. I don't know if it was jealous of updated computers or what but even the apple experts can't get it to turn on. So, a new computer is on the way (from China - did you know that Macs are produced in China?).

That is a long way of saying perhaps I'll be writing more now that my computer is working. And, I can download pictures again so maybe I can show you life around here, including our beautiful landscaped yard and garden ...