I was supposed to make a beef and pumpkin stew for dinner last night, but I forgot about it until mid-afternoon and by then it was too late to start it. I'm making that stew today instead, but, in the meantime, I needed to find something else for dinner last night. I ended up settling on this lamb and pea salad combo.

The recipe calls for eight lamb chops. It specifies how thick they should be cut, but not which part of the lamb they should be cut from. I'm used to "lamb chops" without further disambiguation meaning loin chops. And, conveniently, I had a bunch of thos in the freezer. I only had seven, not eight, but I figured that was close enough. It wasn't until this morning, when I happened to glance at the next page of the cookbook and saw the recipe photo that I realized they had been intending for this to be made with rib chops. Or maybe it doesn't matter and any sort of lamb chops will work fine! I'm not sure, but I can at least now vouch for the success of loin chops. They worked very well for this.

Grilled Lamb Chops with Pea Salad

Slightly adapted from Dish of the Day by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

Lamb

• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp. garlic paste
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 8 lamb chops (loin or rib, cut ~3cm thick)
• 3/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• pepper, to taste

Salad

• 3 c. peas (fresh or frozen)
• 2 Tbsp. fresh mint, minced
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
• 100g feta, crumbled
• pepper, to taste

Directions

Lamb

1. Combine the lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic paste, and olive oil and mix well.
2. Place the marinade in a shallow dish and add the lamb chops. Marinate for 30-60 minutes, turning halfway through.
3. Set up your grill for direct heat cooking and allow it to preheat for 5-10 minutes.
4. Season the lamb with salt and sear over direct heat for 3-5 minutes per side.
5. Once lamb is cooked to desired doneness, remove from heat, season to taste with black pepper, and let rest for ~5 minutes.

Salad

1. If using fresh peas, blanch them in salted water for a minute or two and then shock in cold water to stop cooking. For frozen peas, simply thaw and proceed with recipe.
2. Toss peas with mint and oil.
3. Just before serving, stir in the vinegar and feta.
4. Season to taste with black pepper and serve with lamb chops.