The Coalition of the Swilling

Dinner tonight will be pan-fried lamb chops, wild rice, and asparagus. First, the wild rice. It cooks for 60 minutes, so you best get it on right away. And since the recipe just says 'liquid' I'm going to use chicken stock instead of water to give it some added flavor

So let's get the stock boiling so the rice can start the long slow cooking process

Who would have thought my Irish relatives were involved in the wild rice trade?

Anyhow, think of some way to occupy yourself for 45 minutes and then rinse the asparagus and put them in a vegetable dish with about an inch of water and cover with plastic wrap. Oh and cut a few holes in the wrap, too, for the old steam-action.

Set that aside for as minute, as it only takes 3 minutes to cook in the microwave, so you can leave that for the end.

Now as my Bride is 50% Danish I always happen to have boiling pots of oil at the ready in our household in case her Viking blood gets the better of her (those of you who have alternative relationships should put on a pan of vegetable oil at medium high heat at this point)

and this will come in handy for the next stage, as first we coat the chops with parmesan

then egg

then plain bread crumbs

then pop them into the Viking-O-Vat

Figure about 4 minutes per side. Now it's ben about an hour so let's see how the rice is doing

excellent. Microwave the asparagus for 3 minutes and take out the chops

Yum. Now savvy readers and savvy labs

will have noticed that there were 12 chops originally but somehow only 9 made it onto the platter. Where'd the other 3 go?

Oh yeah!

Assemble and enjoy!