It ain't the meat it's the m...........arinade. Yogurt and spice marinated chops

Some of you may have been wondering  "Annalena, are you ever going to cook meat again?"   (Ok, maybe one of you was wondering that.  Or maybe not).  Well, yes, Annalena has been cooking meat, although the current state of her cholesterol may be requiring her to be doing less of that.  It has come as a surprise, ragazzi, because Annalena has always had "clean blood" as they say.  Welcome to the ravages of age.

But yes, indeed, she has some meat recipes for you, and she is going to try to get you TWO of them today. This one, Annalena made with goat chops.

Now, before the EWWWING starts (that should be for sheeps:  sad joke here, but never mind), you CAN substitute lamb chops here.  But if you are thinking "poor little goats,"  but not thinking "poor little lambs," and even if you are, let's go over this .  As Annalena has pointed out before, half of all baby animals are males.  That is the statistics ragazzi, can't change them.  And for every 20 or so female animals, one needs ONE male.  So, if one thinks in terms of 200 animals, 100 are female, 100 are male, and of those 100 male animals, we are only going to need 5 for , ahem, "servicing" those girls.    95 have no purpose other than...

We get it, don't we?   And if you have no problem with the idea of eating lamb but goat is giving you skeeves, try it.  Try it in a restaurant.  If goat is cooked properly, you will find that it is mild, meaty, and delicious.  Older goat IS gamier - just like mutton.  But even mutton, if the animal was raised properly, is not so strong as to make you feel that you are eating something gross.  Try this with lamb chops, try it with goat chops, but do try it.

We now approach the issue of marinades, and again, we are reviewing here:  marinades do not penetrate into meat.  PERIOD.   Any cookbook that tells you anything else, is wrong.  If you want a marinade to penetrate a piece of meat, get a syringe (there are cooking syringes available), fill it with the marinade, and inject.  Indeed, there is a classic, not often made French dish, where one injects upwards of a pint of orange juice into a leg of lamb, over a period of time.  Annalena has never had it, but perhaps one day.

So, what do marinades do?   Well, most of them start with an acid element, and as such, they tenderize the meat.  Also, they give flavor to the SURFACE of what is put in them.  Hence, you will get the marinade up front,  followed by meaty flavor.  Let's go, ragazzi, and let's get some chops in the oven.

You will need anywhere from four, to six shoulder or thicker, loin chops .  They can go up to about 8 ounces, which is a big chop, even considering the bone.  Wash them and pat them dry while you collect the other ingredients.

First, get a nice, big onion, peel it, and slice it as if you were making thick onion rings.  Combine that with the chops.  A 9x13 is good for 6 chops, but you can use smaller, or even a large bowl, for 4, or even six.    We then mix a cup of yogurt.  Plain yogurt.  The original recipe called for full fat, but there is no need for this, and if you are working with only four chops, the six ounce container will do fine.  Mix this with 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of ground cumin, a tablespoon of ground cardamom (the recipe specified green cardamom:  Annalena says "bite me"), and then smash 8 cloves of garlic to a paste.  Zest a lemon, toss the zest in, and then juice it.  Put the juice in, too.

So, we've mixed yogurt, which is an acid, with spcies, oil, and lemon juice, which is also an acid.  Annalena suggests you add a teaspoon of salt too.  Pour this all over your chops, cover them, and put the whole thing in the fridge, and leave it overnight.  If you are pressed for time, four hours will work.

When you're ready to cook, oil up your stove top grill and also turn your oven to 400 (unless your oven happens to be broken, which happened to Annalena, but we won't talk about that here).  When a drop of water dances around on the grill top, take out the chops, and while you should let excess marinade drip off, don't wipe off what's there.  Put the chops on the grill.  THE SMELL!!!! Oh, the wonderful spicy smell!.  You will need to cook them for about 5-6 minutes a side.  When you're done with them, put them into that oven, for another ten minutes or so.

Don't turn off the flame. Remember those onions?  Annalena KNEW you did.  Treat them the same way you did the chops, and put em on the grill. More of that wonderful smell, ragazzi, and browned and burnt onions.  Gee, we don't like that, do we?

And... END SCENE.  We are done.  Grilled goat or lamb chops,  grilled onion rings. Now what is wrong with that?   Nothing, if you ask Annalena.

A fennel and orange salad goes so well with this, that Annalena insists you have one.  Also, if you've been assiduous and froze sweet corn over the summer, now is the time to deploy it.  Or hominy.  Or polenta.  Somehow, corn products just seem to go with this.

Again, we didn't work very hard here, carissimi, did we?  And we never do.  Well, we do sometimes.

Next time around, we'll be working easy too.  And the next recipe is fine for all the single ladies out there.