October 2003

It was only a truck stop, really, the patio framed off from the highway by a thick trellis of roses. But the dish that came out of that little Rhône restaurant could have been executed by a four-star Michelin chef. It was lamb shoulder, split and stuffed with black olives, the sauce nothing more than the lush juices spilling onto the plate. It wasn't the prettiest dish, being mostly black and lumpy, but the flavors were transcendent, the dark earthiness of the olives playing off the gamy, herby lamb, and the syrah served with it just as black and wild. Since then, I've tried to recreate that dish a dozen times, and with it poured whatever was around. While the recipe hasn't been perfected, what to drink with it has: syrah. Cabernet is too straight-laced in such gamy company, grenache too lollipop-like next to its earthy taste. Merlot does all right, but that's it; the combination doesn't have much to say. Syrah, though, whether French, Australian, American or even Greek, tends to evoke low moans of appreciation, the game-on-game flavors stirring a deep, animal response. I wondered if others found a similar synchronicity, so I asked several chefs and sommeliers in areas famed for their lamb. Even if they hadn't thought about it much before, their answers and recipes highlight the things about lamb that stand it apart from other meats, as well as its simpatico grace with syrah.

Jérôme Verrière, La Mirande, Avignon, France
Lamb appears nearly as frequently on menus in France as chicken does in the US Ñ no surprise, since the French eat nearly five times as much lamb as we do. And when the French think lamb, they often think of the Rhône, where the warm, hilly, scrubby terrain is much more suited to sheep than cattle.
  "Our lamb comes from the Pré-Alpes, just at the doors to Provence," says Jérôme Verrière, La Mirande's chef. "These lambs have been raised in the wild, and they eat the perfumed herbs one finds in the garrigue, like thyme and rosemary." On such a diet, the lamb's meat starts out tender and perfumed before it even arrives in the kitchen.
  Following the rule of "what grows together goes together," it makes sense that this lamb goes well with local red wines, most of which are based on syrah. Verrière agrees, but takes the match a step further, coating his lamb in a spicy breadcrumb crust. "I chose this recipe for the color above all. The vibrant red of the peppers wakes up the tastebuds," he says. "But I also love the mix of tastes and the complexity the peppers add to the lamb. It's spicy and soft all at once. This is a dish strong in emotion and in taste; it cannot match anything but a wine of character, like syrah."
  La Mirande's sommelier, David Ripetti, agrees. "I would suggest a wine like the Domaine Gérin or Domaine des Vins de Viènne Cuvée Sotanum, both one-hundred-percent syrah from the Pays des Collines Rhodaniènnes," he says. "Just south of the town of Vienne, these very old vineyards produce red wines on par with the quality of those from Côte Rôtie. They offer strong aromas tempered by a lot of elegance and finesse." That combination recalls the recipe here, which adds a fiery note to the most elegant cut of the lamb, the tenderloin.

Mel Master, Mel's Bar and Grill, Denver, CO
It would be nice to think that Colorado's famed lamb is what drew Mel and Janie Master to Denver after living in Aix-en-Provence, where the lamb is fragrant (as it is in the Rhône) from dining on rosemary-rich garrigue. That wasn't quite how it happened, but the lamb dish Mel's offered this summer, with couscous, olives, roasted fennel, mint and tomato coulis, was so southern French it could have been air-shipped from Nice.
  When Mel Master thinks of his favorite lamb-and-syrah pairings, though, he thinks deeper, richer and darker than sunny Provence. "Back when we lived in Aix-en-Provence, we had lots of gigot ˆ la ficelle Ñ you know, just plain, simple, roast lamb. We'd drink with it a plain, simple Côtes-du-Rhône. But with any type of daube, or stew, we'd steer towards the north. Syrahs from the north are richer, meatier and gamier, and lamb is a good foil to those qualities."
  The basic idea behind this dish can be applied to any cut of lamb; the herbs and the sauce are the key. Ditto for the wine: "My favorite syrah with this would probably be a Hermitage from Chave from a vintage like 1989," Master says, "if I could afford it and if I could find it! But I also love the syrah from Qupé, and then, of course, if I was being budget conscious, I would drink my own wine, the Tortoise Creek Syrah Cuvée Hecto 2002."

Jeffrey Goldstein, Rhône, NYC, NY
There may be models at the bar, transvestites on the sidewalk, and drum-and-bass beats creating concentric waves in your Côte-Rôtie, but one bite of the burger at Rhône in New York's Meatpacking District makes it easy to slip into a French frame of mind. Sure, if it was really France, the burger would be eaten with a knife and fork, not held in your hands. But if the meat were all-American, it wouldn't have that gamy, spicy flavor, since this burger's made out of lamb.
  Not that all the food at Rhône is French. Goldstein, who fell in love with Rhône wines after discovering that he could wow a date for just $12 with Ch‰teauneuf-du-Pape back in 1978, opened Rhône about five years ago. "My original idea was to find a local chef to do the cuisine of the Rhône. Here I am, six chefs later," he says. Since January 2003, Andrew Nguyen, a French-Vietnamese chef, has been in the kitchen putting out eclectic dishes that range from French-accented to Asian, and everywhere in between. "The thing about Andy's food is that it's pure and clean. It's based on reductions, herbs and spices," Goldstein says. "There are no blind driveways."
  Replace "Andy's food" with "syrah" in that statement, and it would apply just as well. "There are many of those flavors going on in syrah Ñ the meatiness, the spice and the herbs," Goldstein says. Lamb is one way to play up that inherent gamy meat flavor in the wine. "I love syrah with lamb dishes. Take the lamb burger: There's so much gamy, spicy flavor here," he says. "If I could have anything with it, I'd have a Côte-Rôtie. Something with a nice acid level, because it's such a rich bite." And if you don't have the kind of wallet that can afford Côte-Rôtie with a burger? "A St-Joseph. It also has a really nice acidity to cut through the fat, plus you've got all those herb, olive and meaty flavors."

Teage Ezard, Ezard at Adelphi, Melbourne, Australia
Teage Ezard is one of the hottest chefs in Australia today, turning out brave combinations of Asian and continental cuisine that he's dubbed Australian freestyle. Anywhere else in the world lamb may feel like one of the more adventurous menu picks, but at Ezard at Adelphi, it's the tamest choice. Ezard reserves his more classical preparations for it, because "to me, lamb requires a lot of spice, but it doesn't particularly go with Asian spices. The fattiness seems to respond better to more Greek-style spices Ñ garlic, lemon, pepper."
  Rather than trick out his lamb with chile-spiked sauces or Thai-inspired sides, as he does pork or chicken, Ezard looks towards another influence: the Middle East. "What inspired the sumac on the lamb, I think, was Paula Wolfert's Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean. I was having a little surf through it, and it just stuck in my head," he says. After that, he went freestyle with the idea, using Middle Eastern ingredients like pomegranate molasses and babaganoush but applying Asian principles. "It's a dish of opposites," he says. "You need that yin and yang in there to make it dynamic and to balance the flavors."
  Meredith Stone, Ezard at Adelphi's on-staff "wine waiter," as she prefers to be called, goes for syrah here. "This dish is juicy, meaty, smoky and sharp; you want a savory note to play in there. Cooler climate shiraz, like some from Victoria, can go very well." These tend to be leaner and have more herbal notes, she feels, letting the dish to shine through. "You don't want a big, jammy Barossa shiraz; even some of Jasper Hill's shirazes [from Victoria] can get pretty beasty," she says. Rather than shy away from the pungency of the lamb and its spicing, Stone looks for a strong wine to match the dish's strong flavors. For her, shiraz has guts but also restraint. "What you're looking for is something that's got direction, like the Redesdale shiraz from Heathcote. It has lots of white pepper and spice, and long, linear lines, like it's on a trek."
  As they say, it's the journey that matters, not the destination.

Piquillo-Crusted Lamb with Olive Panisses
From Chef Jerome Verrière,
La Mirande, Avignon, France
Serves four.

11/2 pounds lamb filets 
1 ounce piquillo pepper, ground
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 cup breadcrumbs 
3 tablespoons butter, room temperature
Pinch each salt and pepper

3 cups cold water 
11/2 cups chickpea flour 
11/2 tablespoons olive oil
7 ounces black olives, pitted 
   and roughly chopped
1 small clove garlic, chopped finely
peanut oil for frying

1 quart syrah, or other dry red wine
3 shallots, chopped 
5 black peppercorns
8 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
11/2 quart veal stock
4 tablespoons butter or beef marrow
2 racks of lamb (8 ribs each)
few sprigs thyme
few sprigs rosemary
4 cloves garlic, skin on, crushed 
   with back of knife

11/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb (trimmed) 
   (or substitute ground lamb)
1/2 large red onion, diced small
3 large cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/2 teaspoon harissa*
1 tablespoon Madras curry powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt & pepper 
1 ounce goat cheese
4 rolls (brioche preferred)
1/2 cup roasted red pepper strips
1 cucumber, sliced thinly
2 cups mesclun greens, washed and dried

7 ounces caul fat
6 lamb racks, chine bone removed, 
   4 ribs each
21/2 ounces ground sumac
7 ounces pomegranate molasses

31/2 ounces grenadine
7 ounces superfine sugar
5 ounces water

1 large eggplant
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons tahini
juice of 1 lemon
salt & pepper

1/2 pound self-rising flour
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
8 ounces beer
1 3/4 pints vegetable oil for frying
1 eggplant 
3/4 ounce flour

1 cup feta (a soft, creamy, low-salt 
   version is best)
1/2 cup chervil sprigs
1/2 cup dill sprigs
1 cup chives chopped in 3/4-inch lengths
1 lemon, peel and pith removed, 
   finely diced
1 small red onion, peeled and 
   sliced thinly into rings