Spur-of-the-Moment Dinner Party

So, I decided I wanted to make lamb last night.  That would pretty much be the first time that I cooked it.  I have used ground lamb in a meatloaf, but other than that I had never cooked with it.  So yesterday morning I found a few recipes online through foodily.com.  This is a great website if your looking for something to make.  You can type in one or more ingredients on the left side and if you need it to be without something (ex. peanuts, etc.) you can type that on the right and then it searches through websites and blogs for recipes for you.  It’s great!  That’s how I came up with last night’s  dinner.  I made garlic-roasted leg of lamb with a red wine reduction sauce, creamed new potatoes, roasted asparagus and a Greek salad for starters.  Oh, and a gooseberry pie, but I can’t take credit for that.  After making that dinner, I just didn’t have time to make a dessert, but luckily my husband likes to stock up on Village Pie Maker pies, and we just happened to have a gooseberry one in our deep freeze.  So I just popped that in the over after I was done baking everything else and we had a delicious dessert!

So, since I made all of that food, I decided we need to share, so we had Kevin’s family over along with a family friend, Arnie.  The best compliment all night was from my brother-in-law, Jim.  He’s an excellent cook and baker so any compliments from him are very rewarding!  He said that the lamb and sauce were “amazing”. That made my night!

Our “dinning room” is barely big enough to hold six people around the table without an extra leaf in it. But Kevin, his cousin Bryan (left) and family friend Arnie (right) decided to put the table diagonally across the dining room to make it easier to fit people around it.  Good thinking guys!

Anyways, below are the recipes and some pictures from our evening with family.  I didn’t take as many pictures because a.) I would just plain forget to and b.) I knew this blog would be long since I would be sharing five recipes.  All of these recipes were new to me, were extremely easy and were very delicious!  Since we had nine adults and HD eating, I ended up doubling the potato recipe but kept everything else the same.  So, please enjoy!

Greek Salad
Romaine lettuce
Tomatoes, chopped into large pieces
Feta cheese
Peperoncini peppers
Red onion
Kalamata olives
Pepper, to taste
Greek salad dressing (recipe below)

Place all ingredients into a large bowl and mix well.

Salad ingredients

Greek Salad Dressing
Recipe from food.com.
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
3 Tbls. fresh lemon juice
3 garlic cloves, minced
1-1/4 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. fresh dill, finely chopped
1/4 tsp. salt
Black pepper to taste

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together well.  Pour over salad just before serving.  I have a Pampered Chef salad dressing container, shown in the picture below, that works really well for making salad dressings.  If there are leftovers, you can just place the whole container in the refrigerator!

Salad dressing ingredients

Garlic-Roasted Leg of Lamb 
Recipe adapted from marthastewart.com.
1/2 cup olive oil
10 large garlic cloves
1 Tbls. salt
1 tsp. pepper
5 lb. leg of lamb (I used 2 smaller legs of lamb that ended up just under 5 lbs total)
Lamb Pan Sauce (recipe below)

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  In a blender (a Magic Bullet worked really well for this), process the oil, garlic cloves, salt and pepper until smooth and emulsified, scraping down the sides as needed.

2.  Place lamb, fat side up, on a rack set on a roasting pan (I just placed them directly in my roasting pan); spread garlic mixture all over lamb.  Roast in oven until meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat registers 135 degrees for medium rare.  It took me about 1.5 hours.

3.  Transfer lamb to a platter and keep warm while you make the Pan Sauce.  Slice lamb just before serving.

Lamb before going into the oven.

After baking for 1.5 hours in 400 degree oven.  Yum!

Directions:
1.  Pour about 2/3 of the red wine into the roasting pan in which the lamb was cooked.

2.  Scrape up browned bits from the bottom of the pan.  Pour into a medium saucepan.  Add the remaining red wine, chicken stock and salt.  Bring to a boil and cook until liquid as reduced to about 1 1/2 cups, about 10 minutes.  Skim fat from surface, as needed.

3.  Strain sauce into a gravy boat and serve with sliced lamb.

The wine that I used to make the sauce with was also very good drinking wine!

HD eating a pre-dinner snack while mommy is cooking!

Creamed New Potatoes
Recipe adapted from food.com.  I ended up doubling this recipe since we had nine people eating it and we had a little leftovers.  The below recipe is not doubled.  It should serve 6 people.
2-1/2 unpeeled small red potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tsp. salt
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, cubed
1 cup buttermilk
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried tarragon
1/4 tsp. black pepper

Directions:
1.  Place potatoes in a saucepan and cover with water; add salt.

2.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat and cover and cook for 15-20 minutes or until tender.

3.  Meanwhile in another saucepan, combine the rest of the ingredients; cook over medium heat until cheese is melted and mixture is smooth.

4.  Remove from the heat.

5.  Drain potatoes and place in a serving bowl; add cream sauce and toss to coat.

Creamed New Potatoes.  Y.U.M.

I also placed two bunches of asparagus on a baking sheet and drizzled olive oil over them.  Then I baked for them about 15 minutes or until tender at 350 degrees.  (I forgot to take a picture, sorry!)

While the asparagus was in the oven, I also placed the Village Pie Maker Gooseberry Pie in the oven since it needed 1 hour and 15 minutes to bake.

Kevin’s favorite flavor of pie from the Village Pie Maker is the gooseberry pie.  My favorite is the strawberry/ rhubarb.  Delicious!

Now it’s time to eat!  Enjoy!!!

Greek Salad for starters.

Family dinner.  From left going around the table are family friend Arnie, Kevin’s cousin Bryan, his fiance Kelsey, Kevin’s mom Rhonda and dad Greg, then sister- in-law Nancy and brother Jim, then on the end is Kevin and HD.  I’m not in the picture since someone had to snap the picture!

HD loves tomatoes.

The complete meal, lamb with sauce, asparagus and potatoes with a nice glass of red wine.

Cheers!

Then dessert time!  We served the pie with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Then play time with Uncle Jim!