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Lamb from A to Z - A Short History
Over the course of my research into this noble subject, I have experienced many different emotions. I believe that every celebration or event is a pretext for the coming together of two elements: product and cooking, a partnership inseparable from the creative process. Who could be a great painter without his paints, a musician without his instrument, a sculptor without his mallet, a wolf without his lamb?
Every human being needs a complement to achieve his work. It is also generally acknowledged that religious events are conducive to getting together, to communion and gathering, and they provided our ancestors with an opportunity for celebration. This enduring tradition, handed down from one generation to the next, has had a lasting impact on the world’s gastronomy, and now when spring comes, young milk-fed lamb is sacrificed on the table of our celebratory meals.
Lamb is a huge and comprehensive topic, often touched with poetry. Many storytellers and poets have used lamb as a symbol, a synonym of virtue, sweetness, tenderness… all the qualities that make lamb a choice dish, and the ideal partner for our Easter celebrations.
Food lovers from every continent have never stopped
using their imaginations to create new lamb dishes,
each as delicious as the next.
Lamb is associated with purity, and after skillful preparations
in the adept hands of cooks, it becomes a divine dish.
-roasted whole on the coals, buried in the hot desert sands and covered with straw or vine shoots
-roasted in the oven covered with freshly roasted coffee, on a pulley and a spit raised with strength and conviction, that has slowly turned for hours as the minutes drop away like ripe grapes from the bunch
-plump tender legs of lamb
-racks prepared in a thousand and one ways
-tenderloins, more contemporary, with their wonderful noisettes
-the sublimely flavourful shoulder
-the saddle… which doesn’t belong just to a horse!
-the baron, named in honour of the lord of the manor, contains two very distinct parts, namely the hind legs and the saddle, all in one piece. It would have been extremely indelicate to call it the “baroness” after the baron’s wife, since any reference to a woman’s anatomical parts was strictly prohibited!
Over time, lamb dishes with sauce began to appear, perfectly suited to the shoulder, such as navarins and lamb sautés.
With lamb, much depends upon what part of the world it has grazed in: its flavour differs widely according to its age, origin and diet.
Various nations over the centuries have adopted lamb as a culinary emblem in which culture and tradition come together in perfect partnership.
In short, lamb inspires stories, poems and the cook within me, and rewards the consumer with the many virtues its meat has to offer.
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