Local Spring Lamb - perfect for Easter
We get our lamb from Will Dickson, at Wick Farm in Downton. He’s a handsome fellow, and so are his sheep, pretty as a picture and look great on a plate. Last year we served 350 kilograms to 1400, happy wedding guests over the summer season. They are born in the spring and grow in the sunshine, grass fed in the fields around Downton. I popped down to see them last year, just next to Trafalgar school, and met up with the shepherd who was looking after them. He was very proud of his flock, waxing lyrical about the quality of meat they produce, whilst telling me that he prefers hogget, a lamb with a couple of years growth on it and with much more flavour.
We use the legs, which come to us butterflied from a local butcher. We marinate them in olive oil, lemon, red wine vinegar, black pepper, loads of fresh thyme, garlic, cumin and smoked paprika for 48 hours. Then sear them off over a charcoal fire in our Drumbequeues, before smoking them using wet oak chippings from David Mouland, the cabinet maker next door. They are finished through an oven, and then rest for a fat forty minutes before being carved and served lovely and pink.
It’s one of our best-selling dishes, using a recipe I discovered from Sam Clarke, he of Moro fame. He cooked it when he came to do a guest chef evening a few years ago and served it with a beetroot pilav and herb borani. The borani is basically a Greek yoghurt blitzed with tarragon, basil, parsley, mint, garlic, wilted spinach and spring onion. It takes the place of gravy and transforms the dish into a really light, summer lunch. It’s delightful and is loved, even by people who say they don’t normally eat lamb. We serve it with beetroot and potato dauphinoise and a little jus, just to glaze the meat.
When we started Bread and Flowers, one of our best sellers was a minted lamb and orange khoresh, a Persian stew and a recipe from the legendary Diana Henry. It is absolutely delicious, but I cooked it and ate the leftovers so often that I can barely think of eating it these days, not wishing to do the dish down.
To complete the ‘love affair with lamb’ trio of trivia, Roast Rack of Lamb was the dish I first cooked at Trafalgar park, in my first year of business, for 60 guests at a birthday party. It was one of the first gigs we catered, and I have to admit to being a little green behind the gills. On the timing, not the cooking. We lived next door to Trafalgar and I remember sauntering on to site and immediately thinking, ‘I think we’ve cut this a bit fine’, especially with 100 oysters to open and serve as canapes before dinner. I spent the next few hours with adrenalin coursing through my system as we busted every available sinew to get the meal out in time, which we did. A guest came into the kitchen after service and complemented us. He was completely amazed as to how we managed to get perfectly cooked, pink racks of lamb out to 60 guests in under 10 minutes.
He couldn’t have been more amazed than I was.