Lolz got up very early this morning (well, early for a Saturday) to go and do her Christmas shopping and she assures me that everything she bought was for me, and she let me watch a truly abysmal game of football whilst she did the wrapping up, so I thought it only fair that I treat her to a nice 15 minute meal tonight. I decided to make lamb lollipops (slim pickings now with Lolz and her new found fussiness), which, continuing our recent gastronomic world tour, sounded like it might be taking us to some kind of Willy Wonka spin off business. I was excited and scared.
It actually sounded like a bit of a fusion of cuisines - alongside the "lollipops" was a curry sauce and (smashed up) poppadoms (kind of Indian), there was rice and peas (kind of Caribbean) and even some of the old classic south east Asian flavours - chilli, ginger, coriander and spring onions and all that malarkey as well as the obligatory jarred red peppers. But there was nothing that, to me, looked like it wouldn't be delicious.
I decided to splash out and go to the butchers for the meat. I initially asked for 6 cutlets (it was only the two of us for dinner) but they apparently only do them in full racks of 8. What the hell, I thought - it is Christmas after all so I bought them all for about 9 quid. They looked nice and fat and juicy and definitely suitable for a Saturday night with a nice ale and Strictly on the telly.
There's nothing particularly difficult about cooking it although once again I found myself racing the clock in order to get everything chopped in time and in the pan before the lamb had to come out. The lamb was fantastic and all the spices go fantastically although Jamie's instructions to dunk the cutlet in the curry sauce and then coat it in the poppadoms didn't quite work. For a start, the sauce is really watery and doesn't cling to the cutlet - I don't know if this is because the low fat coconut milk I was using is more watery than other versions or if I just didn't cook it down enough but it really didn't work as a dipping sauce. I ended up just pouring it over everything on my plate, although this made the poppadoms a bit soggy. Rice and peas were straightforward although Lolz thought the lentils were unnecessary.
Lolz gave the dish 8/10. Difficulty rating 5/10.
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