Chocolate with salt

The other day we asked at an other butchery for rib eye and got minute steak instead. Sometimes I get the feeling, that I'm overwhelming the people with my inquiries.

Why am I telling you that, because it's the same story with the rack of lamb. I'm telling the butcher, I want a rack of lamb, so the ribs of a lamb. He's immediately correcting me, trying to convince me, it's the back. Well, I didn't want to fight, I asked him, if I could at least get the back in french cut. Two days later I picked up a very badly butchered back of lamb. It took me half an hour to clean the piece of meat half decent, so we could eat it more or less easily. Don't get me wrong, they are very obliging, cut in the bones a bit, to make it easier for us to eat, but they have no idea, what I'm going to do with the meat, that makes it difficult to get it prepared the right way.

After  I discovered a beautiful Namibian food/travel blog, The Curious Kitchen, and their post about a crusted rack of lamb, I decided on crusting my back of lamb too. But my way.
And I discovered, that I definitely need to work on my  pictures. Does anybody know of a food photography course in Windhoek? And what butcher is he using? Dear Christi, if you read this, please give me a shout.

But now back to my back of lamb; I finally found use for my almond butter and it made my crust heavenly.

I struggled a bit with the cooking time of the lamb. By the time the picture was taken, the lamb was still raw inside, so it had to go into the oven for an other period of time. I was so afraid to overcook it, that in the end I undercooked it. Or at least my piece. But in the end we were so hungry, that we didn't want to wait any longer. The cooking time in my recipe is not the one I took, obviously, but the one I'm sure it'll work perfectly. Sometimes I should just trust my guts.

Nonetheless the dish was very successful, all the flavors worked really well together and as already mentioned, the crust was just yummy.