IMBB ~ TasTea Lamb Chops

Once again, jumping on the bandwagon, I decided to play along with IMBB this month, hosted by A La Cuisine. The theme is tea.
I drink tea not infrequently, Rooibos being one of my favourites and I purchase it from a local tea company. I don't know a whole lot about tea though, so I decided to throw caution to the winds and try something new ~ Lapsang Souchong. For those who have never experienced it, it is a powerful, smoky, black tea which just screams out for a culinary use.

I bounced a few ideas off coworkers and classmates and Rachel suggested I try pairing it with lamb. I don't know if there are pre~existing recipes out there, I just went for it and came up with my own. I ground the lapsang in my mortar and passed it through a sieve. I mixed salt and pepper into the now~powdered tea and pressed lamb loin chops into the mixture, making sure to coat both sides of the chop. I set that aside and combined red wine, gooseberry jam and a teaspoon of tea in a saucepan and brought it to a boil, turning it off and allowing it to steep after it had simmered for a minute. I strained this mixture, popped it in the refrigerator and headed off to get my hair chopped off. When I came back, I heated the oven to 400F and my grill pan to smoking. I placed the chops in the pan, just long enough to mark, about 1 and 1/2 minutes between quarter turns and flips. After the last quarter turn, it went into the oven for 8 minutes ( I like my lamb medium rare). I served them with the sauce, Swiss chard and beautiful pemberton potatoes.