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.

Lamb, goat yogurt, ratatouille, and Rhone

Hmmm.. No, it doesn't really rhyme. But it's what was for dinner tonight. Lamb rib chops, marinated as usual in lemon-garlic-oregano, paired with a garlic-goat yogurt sauce (Yes, this is amazing stuff! And it's rather goaty! In the very best way!). But tonight, I paired it with ratatouille as a side. Now, what is ratatouille? Basically a stew/saute/casserole combining bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant. Tonight, I roasted my veggies before adding them to the piperade of onion, pepper and tomato. It brought out an extra layer of flavor that was very nice, above and beyond sauteeing them in olive oil. Yum.

I had picked up a bottle of the Domaine de la Tourade 2007 Cotes du Rhone, and though I figured it might be young, I wanted to try it. You may remember reading my waxing poetic about this producer's 2003 Vacqueyras, and the CDR did not disappoint. It's incredibly big and complex for a CDR, tons of raspberry fruit, some garrigue, minerality, cocoa notes, roast meat, holy cats! I love this wine already, and it's showing well; it also has all the hallmarks of a wine that should last for years, maybe a decade or more. I intend to pick up at least 4, probably 6, bottles of this to watch it age over time. I also have a few bottles of their 2005 Gigondas, and a couple of their 05 CDR in the cellar. I'm just incredibly impressed by this producer. By now, you may have realized that I'm a Rhone freak--if I could only drink wines from one region fo the world for the rest of my life, I'd likely pick these--for their rusticity, their complexity, their diversity, their friendliness to food, their accessibility when young and the rewards of cellaring. (Burgundy would be a close second, but that's another post.)

Much as I expected, the wine and food also paired beautifully. First of all, lamb and Rhone tends to go well (for that matter, lamb and most red french wines go well...) together. Second, ratatouille comes from the same general region as Rhone wines (for that matter, so does lamb). Finally, there are the flavors and traits of the wine and food that really make it work. The tannins and acid in the wine nicely cut through the fat in the lamb. The fruit accentuated the sweetness of the lamb meat and the veggies in the ratatouille. In short, a lovely pairing.

Rack of Lamb, Cairanne

To celebrate Memorial Day, the completion of hauling out our plants for the summer (no small feat), and the publication of one of my papers in Science, we decided to celebrate with a rather nice meal on Monday night. I roasted up a (half) rack of lamb, paired with orzo and sauted spinach. Now, I love lamb almost any way you can get it. But a rack of rib chops is something for a real special occasion. First, I trimmed it down--cutting off some of the extra fat, and "frenching" the chops--that is, cutting off the fat between the boney part of the chop. I rubbed the cut down with a mix of rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, and roasted it for a short time in a very hot oven, just to a nice medium rare. The flavor was great, and the fat crisped nicely. The meat came from Hanewaald lamb, our farmers market lamb specialist--and it was just spectacular. It was from a young (or small) critter, so was both tender and mild flavored. My cooking did justice to the cut, if I may ignore false modesty. And the goat yogurt sauce with garlic (from the farmers market again) was a great, earthy, acidic pairing. The orzo was nice, and the spinach, sauteed in olive oil with a bit of garlic for about 30 seconds was nice and still a bit "al dente".

But the meal was really brought to fruition by the wine--a Domaine de Boisson Cairanne cotes-du-rhone Villages. I may have mentioned this wine--tasted as part of our Wednesday group--a few weeks back. It's a real southern Rhone beauty. We loved it so much (OK-I loved it) at the tasting that we split a case with a friend-getting it at a per bottle under $15. Now, I am a big fan of the "biggies" of the southern Rhone--notably, Chateauneuf du Papes. These are immense, earthy wines with a great blend of elegance and rusticity. To be truly appreciated, they need years, even decades, of bottle aging. Many also require a small fortune to purchase--top estates sell bottles well into 3 figures. This Cairanne has a lot of those same notes--not surprising, since the region is only a few miles from CdP. It's got a ton of minerality--hot rocks, slate--and a good fruit up front. But it also has the tarry, herbal, tobacco, garrigue-y notes that give southern Rhones so much complexity. By itself, this is a wonderful wine, though, as Julie reminds me, it is definitely better with food--as is virtually any well-made wine.

But, for me, the real beauty was the combination of food, wine, and of course, the reason for celebration. The fruit brought out the sweetness of the lamb, the tannins cut the fat, and the herb rub combined exquisitely with the herbal, garrigue notes in the wine. In short, this was a match made in heaven, or at least in the southern Rhone. The entirety of the meal was so much more than the sum of its parts, thanks to that wonderful synergy. It is not that hard to come up with decent, even good, wine and food pairings. Every so often, you bring together that magical combination of food and wine that is just transcendental. And, when you do, you'll never forget the experience.