Easy Spice Lamb Backstrap Dinner

Let’s talk about the two elephants in the room. Firstly, there’s no photo of the easy spice lamb backstrap dinner, only the lamb. I was photographing my plate while the meal was still warm, and trying to make it look pretty was taking too long, so I gave up and ate it instead.

Second elephant.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of dinners cooked by home cooks like me day in, day out, aren’t Instagrammable. They’re nutritious, simple, practical, and hopefully quick. But not the stuff of reels and pins. Let’s face it, a palmful-sized amount of grilled or pan-fried meat with steamed vegetables isn’t sexy, but it’s what we should be eating for dinner most of the time.

So, why are we here? Because my younger self needs to hear the next bit. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look sexy. What’s sexy is independence. What matters most is that cooking is done, and the food is nutritious. Because you don’t want to be relying on someone else to do that for you for the rest of your life.

Also, dear younger self, as illustrated in the poems on this page, there’s joy in these simple kinds of things, and in getting stuff done. No matter how apparently mundane, it’s still the stuff of life. And each thing has its place, even un-Instagrammable photos 😂 Those concepts alone elevate an easy spice lamb backstrap dinner to a thing of beauty, and a celebration of the everyday. Call it mindfulness, if that works.

I used a more expensive cut of meat (because of my chewy, slimy phobia) but it doesn’t have to be that way. A less expensive cut of lamb or beef also works. It’s just marinating, then knowing how long to cook it. All cooking is timing.

I hear you say you want to see the ugly photo anyway? (Ok, ok, snippet in the pics below served with couscous, and roasted corn, asparagus and broccolini.)

Oh, Sweet Content

Oh, sweet content, that turns the labourer’s sweat
To tears of joy, and shines the roughest face;
How often have I sought you high and low,
And found you still in some lone quiet place;

Here, in my room, when full of happy dreams,
With no life heard beyond that merry sound
Of moths that on my lighted ceiling kiss
Their shadows as they dance and dance around;

Or in a garden, on a summer’s night,
When I have seen the dark and solemn air
Blink with the blind bats’ wings, and heaven’s bright face
Twitch with the stars that shine in thousands there.

-W.h. Davies, Poem in the Public Domain

The Builders