What's not to love about lamb

It was either lunch today or dinner New Year’s Eve that got me thinking. Today a talented chef with a large Food Service Company prepared rib chops from our rack of lamb for a presentation to a chef from a very successful local restaurant. On New Year’s, the lovely Sukey who can cook a rack of lamb like nobody’s business, prepared chops like nobody’s business. Both presentations were incredible. One was for a sales pitch to a potential restaurant customer; one was for a college freshman and her parents, who like most parents, wanted to humor their daughter by giving her whatever she wanted. She wanted rib chops.

So what’s the big deal, right? Who does not like a chop off the rack? I mean, the rack of lamb is often the main and sometimes most expensive item on the menu. And, with all modesty, if the menu reads “Jamison Farm Rack of Lamb”, it probably is the most expensive item on the menu. Both presentations reminded me of the dinner that first showed me why and how Jamison Farm Rack of Lamb is so good, and possibly, expensive.

Before he was famous, Michael Symon was a young chef in nearby Cleveland who was trying to buy lamb for his restaurant, Lolita. Back then, I thought I was famous, but certainly this kid from Cleveland, of all places, wasn’t. Today Michael has TV Shows, Restaurants, Books and who knows what else.

When we started selling to him though, we were already famous for having a good product. When he wrote his first book, Live to Cook, with Michael Ruhlman in 2009, his thoughts describing his cooking centered around the quality of the product. That’s what connected him to us. That was the legacy of Chefs like Jean-Louis Palladin who were leading the charge to use great products as the center of the dish. Jean-Louis told me more than once that his job in cooking our lamb was, “just to not eff it up.”

On my wall, I still have hanging a copy of one of Jean-Louis’s first menus using our lamb. It was from “Jean-Louis at Watergate” circa 1989. As a Frenchman, Jean-Louis believed in terroir. To Americans that was a concept that, at that time, was largely limited to wines. His description of his dish using our lamb was, “ L’Agneau de lait de Pittsburgh saute aux grits de South Carolina aux ravioles au fromage et consoume aux epices.” In English, “Sautéed Milk fed Lamb from Pittsburgh, South Carolina Grits, Cheese Ravioli and spiced consommé.”

He knew that the grass in our area was causing the ewes to have great, full, milky, udders and, therefore, would produce great milk lambs. Later when he switched to using young grass lambs, the same but different quality was there. The lambs were now on grass instead of milk. The taste, though, was different. The young grass lambs were now picking up the taste of the grasses they were consuming. The taste would change with the seasons. In the early spring, the meat has an onion/garlic taste. Later on in the summer the lamb will pick up hints of anise, and carrot as well as other herbs. Jean-Louis loved the change in the taste that occurred with the seasons. Using his method of “Cuisine Instinque,” he would treat and cook the lamb differently depending on its seasonal taste. So on his menu, the milk lamb was simply sautéed. The grits, ravioli, and consommé were separate products standing out for themselves. Great products allowed to “show off” what they were.

When Michael started using our lamb, I was also impressed with how he treated it. He was one of the first chefs we dealt with to utilize the “lower cuts.” He was, after all, in Cleveland. When money is not a problem, many eat the middle meats of rack and loin, meaning you’re eating, “high on the hog.” When money is a little tighter people will utilize the lower cuts. These cuts end up in braises, sausages, charcuterie etc. The flavor is wonderful.

He was very successful using these cuts in his restaurant. He wanted to have a special dinner featuring our lamb. When we talked about what he had in mind, I was blown away. He wanted to use this “peasant food” as a feature. Remember, this was mid 2000’s, probably 2005 or 2006. We were still concentrating on selling the middle meats of racks and saddles and selling the lower cuts with our own sausages, soups, stews and lamb pie. I wasn’t sure if it would sell. I wasn’t sure it would get much of a response. It was sold out.

So, of the six courses, one was dessert, two featured our lamb as rillettes and sausage, and two were braised and slow roasted preparations. This was Michael’s cooking. It was wonderful. He was on the line cooking; remember, this was before he was famous.

Since he was working in the kitchen, I was charged with saying something about each course as it was served. As you can see from the menu, five of the courses had a matched wine. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s not so good. Usually by the third or fourth course of schmoozing with the guests and then standing up to explain the course, with the proper wine in my hand, my enthusiasm can get the best of me. The dishes were wonderful. I really hadn’t had our lamb cooked like that by anyone before. Maybe it was his Greek  vibes coming out.

After the dessert, Michael came out to greet the guests. Amidst all the hoopla, he smiled and laughed, just like on TV, and charmed all the diners. After a few minutes of this, the guests started filing out, giving Michael and me and the staff a chance to talk and decompress with an “after service” beverage or two.

Michael started asking me which courses I liked the best. I began by telling him of all the chefs that had cooked our lamb, this could have been the best interpretation of all the different cuts. It really was. The slow cooking, rillettes, and use of the lower cuts in general just show what a versatile product lamb is because you can make so many different types of dishes with it.

My favorite course that Michael cooked was the “white bean agnolotti.” We’re talking braised lamb shoulder in agnolotti made with white beans. And, if that’s not enough, it was paired with an Oregon Pinot Noir. So, then we talked about the slow roasted leg, the rillettes and the sausage. We were both bubbling, hugging each other, and generally going on about how wonderful each other was; he as the chef, and I as the producer.

I think he noticed that I had talked about every course but the chop. I think he thought he screwed up. The rib chop was purple. Not medium rare and pinkish inside, not rare and pink inside, it looked raw and purple inside. But, being the producer seated at a table of paying customers, I had to try it. During that course, the guests at the table waited expectantly as I cavalierly picked up the chop because I was afraid to use the knife. I really thought that maybe it was so raw that I couldn’t cut through it.

On a hunch though, I put the chop back on the plate to use a knife and fork. It seemed that everyone seated at the table was watching me to see if they should try to cut the chop or just pick it up and eat it on the bone. I tried the knife. It cut right through the chop. I then took a taste of what was the most tender and flavorful bite of our lamb I had ever had.

Back to our discussion which by this time included much of the kitchen crew also enjoying after service beverages. As I was praising Michael and his crew’s great craftsmanship on four of the five courses, they started congratulating me on the quality of the lamb. I started explaining the High Temperature Conditioning procedure we use at our Plant, and how that insures the tenderness of the meat. This was the system we developed when Julia Child complained about the leg of lamb we had given her for her Easter Dinner was, “tasty, but tough.”

By this time the “after service beverage” had morphed into a rather loose but joyous “after service celebration with multiple beverages,” as the cold beer favored by farmers and chefs replaced the wine that had matched the dinner courses. Even with this bit of rowdiness, I could see that some of the cooks and, I think, Michael were waiting for some sort of final pronouncement from me about how they had fared cooking Jamison Farm Lamb.

Reflecting on the success of both the chef and his crew’s expertise and that of the farmer/producer, I put my arm around Michael, toasted him and the crew and said, “Michael what you did with the sausage, rillettes, shoulder, and leg shows how good you are. What you did with the rib chop shows how good I am.”

And that really was it. By utilizing High Temperature Conditioning, the carcass is cooled down very slowly allowing tenderizing before rigor mortis. We’ve been using this method at our plant since 1996. Because of this slow chilling method to the carcass for the first fifteen hours or so, the meat is insured to be tender. So tender that a bite of undercooked chop like we had that night will be tender and tasty, but not tough.