You Gotta Try this Lamb/ by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor, and Brock Johnson, Dahlia Chef
I enjoyed a sensational dinner at the Dahlia Lounge last week, and two of my favorite items featured Oregon Anderson Valley lamb. For an appetizer, my husband, Frank, and I ordered lamb carpaccio. I don’t think I’ve every had lamb prepared as carpaccio before, and it turned out to be even better than beef, at least when you’re eating lamb of this quality and freshness. Velvety textured rosy red paper thin slices of raw lamb scattered with bits of creamy sheep’s cheese, full flavored taggiasca olives, and torn bits of dried chile- all of which added up to exactly the right sensory punctuation for the dreamy, olive oil drizzled meat.
For an entree we ordered the “Anderson Valley spring lamb, braised leg, grilled loin, pickled tongue, ricotta dumplings, pearl onions, ramp vinaigrette.” That sounds like a lot of ingredients, but everything was so harmonious together, there wasn’t a single discordant note. The meat was juicy, tender, and succulent, and the pickled tongue added a fun element. (If you’ve never tried tongue, these tender pickled morsels make a good place to start.)
So I asked Dahlia’s Chef, Brock Johnson: what’s the deal with the lamb on the Dahlia menu right now? Here’s his response:
“The story on the lamb is cool. It’s from Oregon, and we’re getting whole animals. We break them down, into muscles for carpaccio, muscles for grilling, and the rest we braise. The tongue we purchase from the same vendor because one lamb tongue isn’t enough for all 30 orders we get from one animal.”
My suggestion? Head over to the Dahlia Lounge for dinner as soon as you can and order up some of Brock’s divine local lamb!
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June 24th, 2011 at 8:37 am
Hello, this must be Seattle week for me as all my food searches the last two days have ended on some site relate to the area. I was wondering if the lamb tongue in the Dahlia article of 6/28/2010 was something I could replicate here. My 85 year old father has been asking me to find it for years and everything is beef. The last commercial outlet I ever spotted closed several years ago. I was going to e-mail the Chef, but thought this might be a better approach.
June 26th, 2011 at 10:24 am
Hi Michael,
I’ll email your request to Chef Brock when I get to work tomorrow. Thanks for reading our blog!
Shelley