Lamb Cheeks

Last night, I managed to cook up a meal that is near the top of all time in my view. Now, my wife was not a fan of this for flavor and texture reasons, so universal praise was not part of the picture here... But here's the scoop:

Sparrow Market, an Ann Arbor classic grocery and meat market, had lamb cheeks on sale. Now, who has ever eaten lamb cheeks? Well, I've had pork and beef cheeks, and I find the texture and strong flavors enticing, so I figured, what the heck, let's try this out. I didn't come home with any particular plan, other than figuring I needed to braise them for a couple hours. A classic sauce with a variety of lamb dishes is a Provencal style sauce--so I built on that theme. After browning the cheeks stove-top, I sweated mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) plus garlic, added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste, and cooked that for maybe 5 minutes. I deglazed with white wine, added some lamb stock tossed in a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary, supplemented with a dash of Aleppo Pepper. After bringing to a boil, the cheeks went back in, and the whole cast iron Le Creuset business went into a 325 degree oven for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, I needed a side dish--and risotto seemed the perfect choice. So, out came some chicken stock, some Arborio rice, a bit of butter and shallot and Parmesan cheese. This is such a yummy, but easy, rice dish, I don't know why people are so afraid of it. Yes, you spend 20 minutes stirring a lot. Yes, you add stock gradually, deciding when the rice is at a doneness you like. Is it technically hard? Not at all. No fancy knife skills. No balancing 8 pots cooking at once. Just a bit of patience and attention to what you're doing.

As the risotto finished up, I removed the cheeks from the cast iron, strained the sauce to remove veggies and herbs, and reduced it by about half. I finished it off with a pat of butter, rewarmed the cheeks in the sauce, and sat down to a delicious dinner. I got out a 2006 Tourade Vacqueyras to accompany. It worked pretty well, although I think the wine is in a bit of a closed, awkward phase right now--there's still a lot of structure, fruit buried under it, and I think it'll be a very pretty bottle in a couple years. Right now, it's not bad at all, but not showing gorgeously yet. So, 5 more bottles to watch over 3-8 years.