I love watching Jacques Pepin on the weekend. He’s always making good food, hanging out with cool people, and drinking wine – that’s my kind of guy. The other weekend he made a rack of lamb with fried potatoes. Ever since, my husband and I have been dreaming of lamb. We finally made a beautiful rack of lamb for dinner on Sunday night. It was – hands down – one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. We cooked the fried potatoes just as Jacques Pepin did. You can find the recipe here. The potatoes were nothing short of amazing. I mean, it’s fried potatoes, you can’t go wrong. And they went beautifully with the rack of lamb.

We did the lamb differently than Jacques Pepin did. The lamb was a combination of many recipes, inspired by some TV-watching and Google-searching. The lamb chops were cooked to a perfect medium rare and melted in your mouth. They were coated in a parsley and Panko bread crumb mixture, and to get the coating to stick the meat was slathered in whole grain Dijon mustard. The coating was crisp and delicate, fresh and flavorful. And if that’s not enough, a shallot and red wine sauce was drizzled over the lamb and potatoes. It was perfection. Served with some freshly grilled asparagus and a bottle of Pinot Noir. Oh. My. Goodness.

It was quite the extravagant meal. And we paid a pretty penny for the rack of lamb. But we would have spent so much more had we went out to eat and purchased a similar plate. And you know what, it was worth the effort and the money. You need to treat yourself to an amazing meal once in a while. It really put a great end to our weekend. 🙂

If you’re interested, below is a somewhat-recipe for the herb-crusted rack of lamb and the shallot and red wine sauce. Enjoy!

Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb
First you french the rack of lamb. Salt and pepper the lamb and sear both sides with canola oil in a stainless steel pan. Move the lamb to a plate and drain the oil from the pan. In a bowl combine chopped parsley, Panko bread crumbs, olive oil, salt and pepper. Coat the meat with whole grain Dijon mustard and then the parsley-breadcrumb mixture. Return the lamb to the pan, serving side up, and put it in a 400°F oven until the meat registers 125°F with a meat thermometer – about 8 minutes. Let the meat rest before slicing and serving.

Shallot and Red Wine Sauce 
Saute some sliced shallot in olive oil. Then add some red wine, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer until reduced by half.