On Sunday evening, my husband likes to cook a meal for us when he can.  He usually likes to cook up some type of red meat with a few vegetable side dishes.  These sides are very good with most any red meat dish, including beef, lamb, veal or even pork. We chose lamb chops (which we will give you a good recipe for at the end of this post).

Take 6 yellow or yukon gold potatoes, and an onion. Cut the potatoes into eighths, and chop the onion. Place these ingredients into a large zip lock bag with a quarter of a cup of olive oil. Cover with salt and pepper. From here, these can be roasted in the oven or even put on the grill (we did the latter to save time). Put them on medium heat on the grill for 40 minutes, stirring regularly. Double this time if in oven.

For red meat dishes, we prefer asparagus, but as a northern hemisphere vegetable, they are out of season. Green beans, however, grown anywhere and are readily available. For these, you need olive oil and butter. Put 30-40 green beans in a 1/8th of a cup of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. Grill for 25 minutes, or put in the oven for 30. Take 10 minutes off these times of you like them crunchy.

Get about 30 Shiitake mushrooms and a six to eight cloves of garlic. Chop the garlic cloves in half, and cut the stems off the shitake mushrooms. Cover in about an eighth of a cup of olive oil, and roast for 25-30 minutes on the grill or in the oven. These are particularly good with a red meat main course.

These are three dishes which are great with red meat. You can do any type of meat with these, but we chose lamb chops, which are quite tasty. The recipe we used was to brush the chops in an olive oil mix filled with thyme and rosemary. Quite delicious after being grilled for 10 minutes a side. Grab a full-bodied cabernet and enjoy!

-m