Valentine’s 2012–JD Cooks ~ Braised Rosemary Lamb Shank, Gourmet Pie and Grilled Ocean Trout

Happy Valentine’s Day! A day to celebrate all the love but having Kayden and Kendric meant that we will have to celebrate it at home. Being adventurous, I try a recipe that I got from Allrecipe.com and put it into test.

It’s pretty simple to cook actually. The lambshank that I got was from a warehouse selling frozen food near Chan Sow Lin and it only costs RM10 for 2 pieces, makes you wonder how much they earn cooking up this dishes at restaurant. I’ve marinated the lambshank overnight with salt and pepper, and what I do is just fried it about 8 minutes or golden brown with olive oil.

Using the leftover oil, sauteed the garlic, onions and carrots until it is golden brown, and then add in chicken broth (or in my case, water plus chicken stocks) along with some red wine and a can of peeled whole tomatoes.

Last of all is to add in some thyme and rosemary (a teaspoon each and fresh if you have those herbs available) and bring it to boil, before letting it simmer for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, you will get something like it. Transfer it into a casserole and put it into the oven for another 30 minutes so that the gravy will thicken up.

While waiting for the lamb shank, I also marinated these fresh trout with some olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice before putting it into the oven as well to bake it until it’s cook.

May have been pestering me to make gourmet pie for the longest time, so to make things easier what I did was getting a can of Campbell Soup and add in marinated chicken cubes (with Herbes de Provence, salt and pepper) to make the chicken soup, before pouring it into a nice bowl and wrapping it up with puff pastry.

The result, is this good looking Gourmet Chicken Pie. The taste was so so mainly because of the can soup being used.

Grilled Ocean Trout is very fresh so the minimal marinate did the trick!

The Braised Rosemary Lambshank was fantastic albeit a bit sourish because I used a whole can of tomatoes, the gravy came out nicely with a gamey taste just like those served in pubs or a certain cake shop.

Desserts was Crème Caramel, something we got from Giant and quite simple to make.

Well, that’s what we had for Valentine dinner all under RM100 and it’s certainly a very filling dinner! Next stop, Buffalo Wings!