These are the ones my mom always made in the oven at home – a big trayful. I loved scraping the bottom of the dish with chips! I get the butcher to cut the lamb chops thin and I leave some fat on the chops as it’s meltingly delicious when roasted with the lemon. They must be served warm and, if it is cold outside, serve on heated plates.
Ingredients
- Lamb Chops 1 kg, thin cut (just under 1 cm thick max), with some fat
- Juice of 2 Lemons (about 8 Tbs)
- Olive Oil 2 Tbs
- Butter 30 g, cut into small chunks
- Dried Greek Oregano 3 heaped tsp, plus a little extra to serve
Cook It
- Preheat the oven to 200°C. Quickly rinse or wipe the lamb chops over with moist paper towels to get rid of any stray bits of bone. Pat dry. Put into a large roasting dish where they fit in a single layer.
- Splash with the lemon, season well with salt and pepper and add the olive oil. Scatter the pieces of butter around and sprinkle the oregano over, crushing it a bit between your fingers. Turn through to coat both sides of the chops.
- Pour 125 ml of water around the sides of the dish. Cover the dish with foil and bake for about 20 minutes until pale but cooked, with a good amount of sauce.
- Remove the foil, lower the oven to 180°C and return the dish to the oven for another 20 minutes or until the chops have a good deep golden colour and the sauce has thickened and is bubbling and sticky in parts (there’s no need to turn the chops over and, depending on your oven, you can turn it to Fan to get the chops more golden if you like). Serve hot with a little extra oregano scattered over.
Image and text from Now & Then by Tessa Kiros, photography by Manos Chatzikonstantis. (C) Murdoch Books.
