October is Dining Month on OnMilwaukee.com. All month, we're stuffed with restaurant reviews, special features, chef profiles and unique articles on everything food. Bon appetit!
Most foodies in this city are familiar with the fine organic fare served at Roots, but how many of you are aware that you can attempt to recreate their decadent dishes at home?
Roots' Web site graciously offers up a couple different chef-inspired recipes for folks to make on their own. Currently, they explain how to make braised spring lamb and strawberry zinfandel soup with candied pecans and lilac whipped cream.
Here is the lamb recipe in full. This dish is rounded out by a mixed green salad with goat cheese and a side of charred asparagus (recipes also included below). It serves six people.
Ingredients:
1 lb. lamb stew meat, trimmed and cut to equal size
1 bulb fennel, cored and diced
1 medium spanish onion, diced
12 cloves garlic, sliced
Salt and pepper
Sherry vinegar
1 cup Pinot noir
1 cup Beef stock
Corn oil to brown mixture in
Directions:
Season lamb with salt and pepper. Preheat a heavy gauge, four-quart saucepan to medium high heat. Begin browning lamb meat in small batches. Remove when browned and set aside. Continue process until final batch is browned. Add fennel, onion and garlic to remaining lamb meat and juices. Stir mixture for one minute on high heat. Add pinot noir and reduce juices by one half volume. Add beef stock and simmer on medium to medium low heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until lamb is fork tender. Adjust acidity with 1-2 tsp. of sherry vinegar, adjust salt and pepper as well. Keep warm while preparing salad.
Bring a 10-inch sauté pan to high heat. Remove fibrous ends of asparagus. Add just enough corn oil to coat pan. Add asparagus and let char, do not move to soon. Do this step in small batches. Set asparagus aside, season with salt and black pepper.
Assemble fresh salad greens on six plates. Crumble 1 to 2 oz. of goat cheese over each salad. Dress salad with extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Garnish with charred asparagus and 3 oz. of warmed lamb ragout. Bon appetit.
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
