Why Lamb’s Head?

Perhaps it was naive of me to think that a blog entry detailing the cooking of an entire lamb’s head (complete with visuals) wouldn’t trigger some kind of slightly less than positive response. The post elicited a pretty wide set of responses from readers, ranging from awe, disgust, intrigue, shock, confusion and understanding. Given that, I thought it might make sense to try and provide some context for this whole adventure and explain why I would ever even consider the idea of cooking a lamb’s head.

In a short period of time, culinary school has had some pretty major effects on my attitudes towards food. While I haven’t always considered myself to be the most adventurous eater, thanks to my parents and a childhood spent in NYC, I got a pretty early introduction to cuisines of the world. Early favorites of mine included Japanese food (especially sashimi), Mexican food and Dim Sum. I can also remember being exposed to specific delicacies like pan fried chicken livers with butter and garlic and lobster tomalley (the green ‘mush’ that is contained inside the lobster) at an early age, culinary rights of passage that I now try to pass on to whoever will humor me. Throughout the years, I’ve also come to love other things like shrimp heads, bone marrow and beef cheeks, but it wasn’t until school began in May when I really began to look for new things to sample and new ways to challenge my taste buds. New favorites include previously untouchable items like the delicious braised chicken feet that you can find at any reputable dim sum establishment (in all of my years of eating dim sum, how did I go so long without trying that?), spicy pork intestines and sweetbreads. Now I can say that I’m at the point where I’ll try pretty much anything that you put in front of me. Building on skills and techniques learned in culinary school, I have also become much more confident in the kitchen and am willing to take on new cooking challenges as well. Case in point, I never would’ve undertaken the task of preparing a nearly whole rabbit without a fundamental understanding of how to braise and how to break down a whole chicken. Given that and given the curiosity and adventurousness that comes with being a culinary school student, I felt compelled to answer yes when a friend asked if I wanted to help her prepare a lamb’s head. What better way to demonstrate one’s skills and abilities as a budding chef then by taking something downright ghastly and turning it into something magnificent? But that’s only part of the story.

The wife began her second year of business school by taking a week-long intensive class called ‘Global Sustainability’, a relatively new offering at her school. On her blog, she talked about some of the things covered in this class and how it opened up her eyes to the idea of practicing and promoting sustainable behaviors. One of her biggest and immediate reactions to this class was to question where and how the meat that we eat makes it to our table. She began to wonder how the animals are treated and handled during the manufacturing process, what kind of impacts massive feedlots, meat processing and packing facilities have on our environment and whether such large scale processes are sustainable over the course of the next few decades? I imagine it’s answers to questions like these that have resulted in people becoming vegetarians and vegans. We enjoy our meat too much to totally give it up, but we began to wonder if there was a way to enjoy meat and have a clear conscious about it.

As I mentioned in my last post, the lamb’s head came from the CSA program that my friend Jenni belongs to. CSA stands for community supported agriculture and by joining a CSA, a consumer is essentially cutting out the middle men and buying local and seasonal food direct from the farmer, which doesn’t really seem like a bad thing at all. CSA programs are all about connecting the consumer with their food sources, embracing quality food items over mass produced foods and supporting the idea that animals destined for the American dining room table can at the very least be raised respectfully, conscientiously and in adherence to sustainable practices. The lamb’s head fits into this picture by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t simply discarded by the farmer or victim of some other more heinous fate. Since the farmer has decided to respect the lamb by not throwing away its head, then I think it’s only fair to cook it and turn it into something edible.

The wife and I are avid viewers of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and in more places than not, you find natives eating various parts of animals that, using what’s available in your local megamart as an indicator, most Americans wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole. Often born out of absolute necessity, a dish like haggis comes to exist. Could the idea of stuffing a sheep’s lungs, heart and liver into its own stomach, then cooking it for hours on end be born out of anything other than necessity? My guess is that early Scottish diners would’ve preferred some nice foie gras had they been given the option. This is just one example of a practice that’s duplicated across the globe, yet this is still something that not all Western-world diners embrace. Interestingly, what any group of foodies, food snobs and food nerds (or whatever you want to call them…myself included) has learned is that it’s these often maligned, neglected, underused and under-appreciated parts of the animal that can provide the biggest flavor and textural rewards.

I took it upon myself to write a detailed account of the lamb’s head cooking in part to educate. Because of my acquired taste for all things tasty and delicious from snout-to-tail and my new-found aptitude in the kitchen, I now can and will prepare things like lamb’s heads and will tell you first hand that they can be some of the most delicious things that are in my culinary repertoire. In the case of the lamb’s head, the meat was tender beyond anything I’ve ever had before and the soup itself was rich and had great texture and mouthfeel. Based on what we’ve learned in culinary school, I shouldn’t be surprised by these results. For cuts of meat that do lots of work (like a leg or a head), braising is an ideal way to transform connective tissue into gelatin, which is what provided our soup with its luxurious texture. Using an entire bottle of tasty wine in our braising medium served a few purposes…it added great flavor to the meat and soup and the acid in the wine served to help break down and tenderize the meat. These are all things that we’ve discussed in class and that I’ve practiced at home countless times simply applied to a new subject.

And so the great lamb’s head experiment perfectly sums up where I am in my culinary development. It satisfies the inner adventurous eater that lies within me, it was a great test to demonstrate my culinary abilities, it was a way to embrace that notion that all parts of the animal should be used, thus paying some form of proper respect and tribute to the animal that was slaughtered so that we could eat, and it was also a way to support the notion of CSA and the idea that animals destined for the American dining table can at the very least be raised conscientiously and sustainably. While I recognize that preparing and eating something like a lamb’s head may be beyond the average reader’s comfort zone, I hope that this has at the very least made for some interesting food for thought.