Recipes

The little T-bones of lamb, done exactly the way the Sunday table remembers

Loin chops, peas, mash and a jug of proper mint sauce — some dinners don't need reinventing. Loin chops are the little T-bones of lamb: a nugget of loin one side of the bone, a scrap of tenderloin on the other, and they cook faster than the potatoes do. And real mint sauce isn't a project — it's chopped mint, sugar and vinegar stirred together in five minutes, and it runs rings around anything from a jar. Twenty-eight minutes, start to plate, and most of that is the spuds.

The taverna's favourite cheap chop, done the taverna way

Walk into a family-run taverna anywhere in Greece and the lamb on the grill is rarely the fancy cut — it's the big, flavour-rich shoulder chop, rubbed with oregano and lemon and cooked over real heat until the edges char. That's exactly what the forequarter chops in your share were made for. Twenty minutes in a quick marinade while you build a proper village salad — tomatoes, cucumber, olives and a slab of feta, not a lettuce leaf in sight — then a hot grill pan does the rest. Summer dinner, no matter the month.

Sweet, savoury, and gone before the rice is

Korean cooks worked this out generations ago: take lean beef, slice it paper thin, and let a grated nashi do the tenderising. The fruit softens the meat while soy, garlic and sesame build the flavour — and thin-cut topside is exactly the lean, even steak the method was made for. An hour in the marinade, a few minutes over ferocious heat, and dinner comes out glossy, caramelised at the edges and disappearing fast. Rice underneath, lettuce leaves alongside if you're being civilised about it.