My name is Stephen Barber.I am the Executive Chef and Director of Culinary at Barmstead at Longmeadow Ranch.So we started the day out with our local lamb purveyor, Don Watson, bringing in a whole lamb.
We got the fires built, a good size fire of cherry and a little bit of oak.So that's the type of woods we use here in Napa.Both are readily available and the cherry
It has a little bit sweeter flavor, enough oak to keep the coals going and the meat even.We started out, we took the whole lamb and we just made slits in the shoulders and in the legs.
Stuffed it with garlic, preserved lemon, and rosemary, and really, really pushes that flavor in when you're cooking it low and slow.After we got it stuffed and finished rubbing it with the harissa, we got it on the cutting board,
and took a meat saw and really cut down that breastplate just to splay it open so it would fit nicely on the rack.We got it up on the rack and next job is to secure it.Start with the front legs and make sure that they're secure.
If you take the baling wire and cross it, and then with a pair of pliers, you want to keep constant tension towards you as you twist.That will keep nice tension, and you'll know when it's tight.
We got the lamb on the rack and shoveled a good bed of coals just to give it a nice start blast of heat.We go to the garden.We make a brush out of all the wonderful herbs. and citrus trees that we have available to us.
So rosemary, lemon leaf, lemon verbena, some coriander, and some cilantro that was seeding, and lavender.
So we tie up a nice brush, we take that harissa spice, we add a little bit of oil to that, and make a marinade that we can brush the lamb as it's slow cooking.
As those coals go out or cool down, we pick out small pieces of wood and just throw them on there over time.And the whole cooking process is about four hours for this lamb.And the size of this lamb was about 40, 45 pounds.
We have Jimmy Nardello peppers, which is a great, complex, fruity, grilling pepper, and some red fingerling potatoes.We steamed the potatoes just lightly and gave them a light smash.
Those both get tossed in a little bit of salsa verde and on the plancha.And what we're looking for is just a little char on those peppers and to get the potatoes nice and crispy on the plancha.
So once the peppers and the potatoes are finished, we pulled off one of the legs and a little bit of the belly meat and carved those up, arranged the nardellos and the potatoes on the plate, and just finished with a little bit of chimichurri sauce.
I think that the smoke complements the lamb.Lamb is a rich, flavorful meat.And I think the smoke complements that and makes it more complex.And it's bold.
If you think about what you want to drink when you're in Napa, if you're coming in and you want to have a nice big cab, I don't think there's anything better than having a nice piece of lamb that has been kissed with a little bit of cherry wood and oak smoke.
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