I’d like to call this blog... I finally found my kitchen fire alarm.

Our fire alarm went off about a million times tonight... and on the 87^th time we finally figured out where that god awful piercing noise was coming from. Before then, yes we had no clue where it was and I was jumping around kitchen spinning my towel like the World Cup fans do. We had moved in July 2011, I mean it’s been like 7 months or so people.  But to not make us look like complete morons... it was hiding underneath the cup cabinet... strange place for it, but whatever we found it!

My man is in town tonight for this dining festivity, so to impress him I must. All the meat dishes in Chef Anne’s cookbook look so delicious, I needed to choose one that could be special for him. As I flipped to “Olive crusted lamb,” I instantly knew we just had to have these tonight. And of course a side... Chef Burrell’s Loosey Goosey Garlic Mashed Potatoes it is!

We head to the store to get the essentials.... love when our local store has wine tastings! Had a few samples and of course it put me in a great mood to get cooking! We headed to the meat section and there they were... precious little rack of lambs. As I gasped at the price (rack of lamb are quite expensive), I just thought to myself “you can’t screw this one up Christa or that’s like $45 down the drain.” On the other hand, Chef Burrell’s recipes so far have been very user friendly and I have yet to screw up on any. So back home we go with lamb, kalamata olives, fresh oregano, lemons, potatoes, milk, garlic, etc.

I started with the potatoes since those usually take forever. I am not going to say I exactly followed her recipe on these. I boiled the potatoes to get them soft and instead of running them through a rice mill, I pounded them with my masher. But used all her ingredients and steps and these garlic mashers were divine!

(The alarm was going off in between the steam from me mashing the potatoes and the browning of the lamb chops, probably more of the fact that I need to clean my oven and there's stuff that was burning in there surely didn't help!!)

Now, onto the lamb... Again we are browning this meat, which is just a delicious idea. So, you brown them on each side in EVOO on the stove top like 4 minutes or so each side. While the lamb relaxes waiting for the oven to heat up, you make your olive concoction that will be brushed onto the browned lamb. I give major snaps to Chef Burrell for this... it was so delicious and something I would have never thought of doing with lamb. You use a cup of Kalamata olives (my personal olive favorite), lemon zest, fresh oregano, and slowly pour in EVOO while pureeing. Then you take this paste and brush it heavily onto your lamb. Then pop these into the oven for 7 minutes. And Boom! What a perfect dish to share with a perfect man. And of course the red wine went down great while cooking this and eating it too! Two great recipes that made a great dinner for me and a very important person.... all in the name of cooking like a rock star!