BLACKBERRY FARM LAMB NECK
A gem of a recipe from its cookbook for a very special night from this intimate, luxurious hotel hidden on 4,000 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee
I've cooked uber special dinners before. The first time was decades ago on New Year's Eve. That dish was salmon en croute, or salmon Wellington. A friend and I worked most of the day on it, only to toss the utterly failed dish in the garbage. The idea was terrific! The execution and technique were loathsome! With this year’s New Year's Eve dish I knew it would be a three-day effort. One that would surely be worth the effort. However, I wasn't sure of myself every step of the way since I've only made it once . . . with sweet success years and years ago. A couple weeks back, I bought the lamb at my fav supermarket, Lunardi's Market, here in Walnut Creek, California. I purchased twice the weight of meat needed for the recipe but didn't figure that out until way into the cooking process. Live and learn. This lamb recipe is from a most remarkable cookbook. (The Blackberry Farm Cookbook) published by an intimate luxury hotel —one of my favorite places on earth— nestled in 4,000 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains called Blackberry Farm. (A newer sister property, Blackberry Mountain, a wellness culinary adventure, sits a couple miles down the winding road.) The Farm, itself, is so isolated not a single other building can be seen from horizon to horizon. Before making this dish the first time, I'd never even imagined a recipe such as "Ten-Hour Braised Lamb Neck." Recalling that first time I made it, ate it, and ever since just not being able to get it out of my head, there was surely no doubt it was worth repeating. This time, however, I had to substitute the neck with a block —a cut that includes part neck and part shoulder. No worries. That cut was the only one I could put my hands on this particular holiday.
The lamb was paired with two vegs. One, a mini oh-so-rare ultra-sweet Hasselback-cut honey nut squash (Honey Nut Squash), roasted only with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The other, oh-so-scrumptious red beets, roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The squash was roasted two days before. The beets one day before.
New Year's Eve day was lamb cooking day. But before those 10 hours in a 250-degree oven with aromatics and red wine and stock, the normally fatty, bony, gristly cut seemed quite unworthy. But that was certainly not the case. It was an unctuous delight. Incidentally, that cooking took place yesterday during a month when the December record 17 feet of snow had already accumulated in Truckee, California, near Lake Tahoe. Folks there last night may well have loved the lamb dinner, too, since some ski hills were closed because of all the drifting and avalanche dangers! The meat was harvested from the block with a fork in what amounted to a culinary mining expedition. To serve, the lamb was then dipped in the juices left over from its roasting then placed on a bed of arugula. It's actually a most-gratifying, full-flavored, moist indelibly memorable meat. But how to present the beets? It took me hours over a couple days earlier in the week to decide to simply cut them into 3/4-inch slices and top with a dollop fresh goat cheese and dust with lemon zest. And how to present the honey nut? Didn't do anything to it. Its color and the slice marks would suffice. Making this holiday a touch more special, it was plated on a decades-ago gift — a vintage Dansk flamestone dinner plate with smooth matte brown rim and white center which was designed circa 1960 (Dansk). All was eaten with vintage Dansk Variation V stainless flatware —first introduced in 1957 (Dansk). This is one dinner where each side and the main was as otherworldly as the other, no matter what order we ate them in . . . .