Marinated lamb steaks with barley salad

So, tonight after the kids went to bed I made the marinated lamb steaks with barley salad from the June 2010 issue of the GoodFood magazine.  It was, quite frankly, delicious!  My taste buds are still in heaven!  This recipe is definitely going on the list of dinners that we will be having again (and again and again and again!!).

After trying it my husband confessed that he was a bit dubious about the barely salad but that it tasted much better than he expected.  As well as making a nice change from potatoes as a side, the barley salad is has a low GI, meaning that you'll feel fuller for longer.  According to the GoodFood magazine the salad gives 2 of your 5-a-day, making it a healthy choice for dinner.

I made a few alterations to the recipe as I was going along.  The first change was forced upon me when I went to by the meat.  My butcher didn't have any lamb steaks, but he did have some lovely looking boneless lamb chops which looked quite thick so I decided that they would do the trick.  The second change was when I was making the marinade - it called for a pinch of dried chilli and I added a bit more than a pinch as we like our food spicy. 

The biggest changes I made were to the barley salad.  When I did the grocery shopping earlier today there were no frozen broad beans in Dunnes, so I bought soya beans and used these instead.  Red onions were on my shopping list but I decided not to bother buying them as 1kg of onions was 29c in Dunnes and I didn't really fancy having a kg of red onions AND and kg of ordinary onions in the house.  Although the red onions were on offer in Lidl this weekend, I decided that it was a bit excessive to buy a kg of them just for one recipe.  I meant to buy a single red onion, but forgot and only realised when I started making the dinner.  So instead of red onion I used two scallions (spring onions).  The red onion wasn't to be cooked and I didn't think that a raw onion would taste nice in the salad, whereas I was confident that the scallions would be fine.

The recipe suggests marinating the lamb for up to two hours if you have the time.  My lamb was marinated for 40 minutes and tasted fine. 

TIP - If I was to decide to make this recipe mid-week I would probably buy the meat at the weekend, make up the marinade, rub into the meat and freeze.  Then I would lift it out the night before making the meal and leave it to defrost and marinate in the fridge.  Alternatively I would make up the marinade the night before or in the morning, but for me the first option would save the most time on meal preparation during the week.

Cost - This was a bit more expensive than some meals that I make.  The lamb chops that I bought were €5.  The soya beans were €1.50, the peas were 50 cent (estimate), the pearl barley was 75 cent, the mint was 50 cent, the lemon was 25 cent and I have allowed 40 cent for the scallions, dried chilli and olive oil.  This makes the total €8.90 which makes this my most expensive meal to date. 

I would not normally spend so much on one meal for two of us, but a lot of couples spend much more than this on a meal in the restaurant on a Saturday night, so as a one off I don't think it's that bad.  In fact, we'd spend more on a takeaway if we were to get one and probably not enjoy it half as much!