RELAX WITH LAMB CHOPS
Pair them with a wild young Syrah
Tradition is under assault across most of the wine business. In fact it’s becoming a tradition to bash tradition, especially among those certain the wine business needs to be democratized and — worst of all — demystified. If it’s not the snobs that must go, it’s those who fail to simplify the subject.
After four decades of moving in wine circles I have met very few so-called snobs, at least no more than I have encountered in other areas of life. Typically, those with wine attitude have the least amount of knowledge. As for those who are determined to demystify the wine business, you might want to try spending a couple of decades researching and discovering the entire discipline before you set about dismantling it after taking a sixweek introductory course in the subject.
Now a word or two about a singular wine tradition that could use some resuscitation — the decanter.
Most of you have seen a decanter in the back of a cupboard. It’s normally wine-stained and dusty and, frankly, looks as if it hasn’t been used in decades. The art of decanting, as simple as it is to perform, is no longer a part of wine drinking in most homes where dinners are squeezed in between a family’s busy schedule of work and play.
Decanting wine suggests a slower, less hurried dinner hour from another era, but I’m guessing we could all find one or two weekly dining experiences where wine and a decanter could meet.
At it’s simplest, decanting means moving wine from its bottle to a larger holding vessel. Long before modern filtering and fining techniques most red wines stored in a cool cellar would “throw” a sediment that settles at the bottom of the bottle. Decanting or pouring the wine off its sediment leaves the remainder clear and clean. If you want to know why you would do this just take a sip of the bitter residue (it won’t harm you) in the bottom of an old bottle.
In what is a connect-the-dots moment in the logic of wine information, the bit of sediment in a bottle of wine is part of the same residue first left behind after fermentation when freerun
SPICY MINT LAMB CHOPS
Dig out that jar of preserved lemons you’ve been avoiding and put it to use in this recipe from Nigella Lawson’s new cookbook, At My Table: A Celebration of Home Cooking. You might also want to heed her advice: “You do need to marinate the lamb for 30 minutes or so, but you can pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back and enjoy it, then whiz up the mint sauce in the meantime.” Damn sensible.
For the lamb:
■ 8 lamb rib chops
■ 7tbsp (105mL) olive oil
■ 1 lemon, juiced and zested
■ 2 tsp (10 mL) dried mint
■ 1 tsp (5 mL) red pepper flakes
■ 1 tsp (5 mL) kosher salt
■ 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
For the mint sauce:
■ 1 bunch fresh mint leaves
■ 1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced
■ 2 small preserved lemons
■ 2 tbsp (30 mL) preserved lemon
pickling liquid ½cup (125mL) olive oil
■ Pea shoots, for garnish
run juice is taken off the skins, pips and spent yeasts. In the cellar when wine is “racked” from barrel to barrel, the sediment,
1. Place lamb into a resealable plastic bag with olive oil, zest, lemon juice, dried mint, red pepper flakes, salt, and garlic. Seal the bag and give a good squidge before marinating for 30 to 40 minutes, long enough for them to come to room temperature.
2. To make the sauce, put mint, garlic, preserved lemons and juice, and ¼ cup (60 mL) oil into a bowl and patiently blitz with an immersion blender. When most of the leaves have been incorporated, pour in remaining oil and blitz again, until you have a deep emerald, emulsified sauce. Taste to see if you want to add salt.
3. Heat a grill pan or heavy-based frying pan over high heat. Lift the cutlets out of the marinade and cook them for about 2 minutes each side, to leave them a little pink inside. Arrange lamb cutlets on a plate, lined with pea shoots. Serve with mint sauce. Makes 4 servings. lees or dead skin cells that remain in the bottom of the barrels are again separated from the wine. At bottling many fine producers neither filter nor fine their wines, leaving consumers to deal with the finest of sediment, or mud, in the bottle. Hence the need to decant.
The other practical use for a decanter more urgent than removing sediment is aeration. At a time when few if any consumers age the wine they buy, most bottles are drunk less than an hour after they are purchased. In this case, decanting is more about aeration and exposing the wine to oxygen for a brief time to break down the tannin and rougher edges.
Think of all those wine folks who are constantly swirling their wine glass, effectively super-aerating the wine and opening the nose before each sip. Aeration can improve the taste of young wines, especially those under screw cap which often have a reductive character (volatile sulphur compound aromas sometimes described as struck match, flint, rubber, or smoke).
Young commercial wines have no sediment but can certainly benefit from a splash decant, a term to describe splashing a full bottle into a decanter to get some air on the wine.
There are several aerator devices on the market you can pour wine through, including the latest in high-tech, the V- Spin Active Decanting System. I’ve been testing the V- Spin and I’m impressed with its ease of use, beautiful decanter and the effect its patent vortex spinner has on younger wines.
No matter how you employ a decanter, it is the fastest way to improve the quality of most any wine, effectively increasing its price/value ratio in as little as 15 minutes. And did we mention it’s an elegant throwback to a less hurried time?