By Gil Whiteley
I’ve owned and operated several restaurants over the years; I’m a chef by necessity, a sommelier by trade and I’m devoted to finding perfect pairings of wine and food. Most people have never had a perfect pairing, or not taken the time to notice what wine best compliments the fare served. But in my business One plus One can equal Three or if you’re extremely lucky, Four, when done right.
I was early in my teens before I first tasted lamb, coming from a lower-middle-class family. Both of my parents worked every day of their lives while I was growing up. It was only later in their lives that they actually got to enjoy more of a lifestyle. Food was consumed for survival in our house; it was rarely celebrated or enjoyed. To this day, I still refuse to go into a restaurant that advertises, “Just like Mom made.”
My sister Mary requested lamb for our family dinner on her 16th birthday (May of 1960; I was almost 12). Our family tradition was to allow the birthday boy or girl to ask for a special meal—within reason—on birthdays. I was introduced to steak the same way a couple of years earlier when my older brother asked for it. Mary had eaten lamb at one of her friends’ houses and loved it.
The taste of lamb made me pause. It seemed exotic, not that I knew what exotic meant back then, but my thoughts understood the concept. My sister was an excellent cook, and I always loved it when she had time to make dinner. It somehow was just better.
I remember thinking, “Wow!” I’m not sure what cut of lamb we had—most likely a roast or a leg—but I couldn’t believe how good it was! It looked like beef, but had such an elegant flavor that I couldn’t put my finger on it. My father was of English heritage, and insisted we have a mint sauce or jelly with our inaugural lamb, and, boy, was he right. I’d never had jelly with meat before either, but I remember thinking on that day that food was a wonderful world I was about to discover.
Just a few short months later, I had lamb again on my 12th birthday because I requested that my sister prepare it just as she did for her own birthday. I’m not sure what she did because it was even better. My romance with lamb had a dramatic beginning. And to this very day when I have lamb (and that’s once or twice a week), it’s special…every time. It’s my twelfth birthday all over again. I can tell you now that we weren’t enjoying the quality lamb that only an all natural Summit Creek Lamb provides. I liked lamb from the beginning, but now I love it.
Imagine my delight when I discovered Summit Creek Natural Lamb—a perfect blend of nature and control of our otherwise toxic environment. Summit Creek lambs consume nothing but the finest natural nutritional feed. The end result is consistency of product—perfect lamb every bite, every time. When you come down to it, stability is all we can hope for. And once you discover Summit Creek Natural Lamb and learn that you never have to fear a lapse in consistency, it’s reassuring to know that you can rely on the same great meat each and every time. Lamb you buy in a supermarket can be as inconsistent as a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, so in order to make your wine choices easy, you need to narrow down your options by buying a controlled, but all-natural cut of lamb from Summit Creek. It is only that way you can have the confidence of serving the very finest meal possible.
Gil Whiteley is a sommelier and has been writing about wine for the past 10 years, he is currently the wine columnist for Wild Blue Yonder, the in flight magazine of Frontier Airlines. Gil discusses wine regularly on his radio show; Gil Whiteley, Sports and More, on 1510-AM, Mile High Sports Radio in Denver.
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pmand is filed under Colorado Lamb, Preparing Lamb. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.