OK, I confess.  I love clothes & shoes & girly bling too & I don’t mind mixing it up in wintertime with some bright fashionable colours at all; but I wasn’t really prepared for the stylish little numbers worn by Milly & Candy; a couple of Dorper poddy lambs not long back from their stint at the Sydney Royal Easter Show!  Almost as soon as I opened the car door these guys were hungry for attention – apparently they haven’t been the same since returning home.

On a sheep stud like Crawlers Gully Dorpers every effort is made to help these little orphaned lambs survive the winter & grow up to take their place amongst the mob.  I was quietly relieved to hear these particular sheep would never make it to the table; they had far more important work to do.  I breathed a sigh of relieve.  I mean, look at them!

After devouring homemade ‘lemonade scones’ & sweet tea & meeting the neighbours, we trundled off around the farm to learn more about the dorper breed that’s yielding more than 5% over conventional meat breeds in the more expensive cuts of lamb.  Given the price of lamb here in Oz, I began to see why Millie & Candy are now looking forward to a long life & enjoying superstar status.

Martin Pye & Eileen Moriarty are committed to ethical & sustainable farming methods, raising quality free range, grass fed & chemically free animals.  Its little wonder these animals are of superior quality, later on I was introduced to fascinating stud records where every animal has a history that’s keenly watched & recorded to ultimately produce the best possible lineage.

We Chefs live in a funny reality of aromas, tastes & textures that we’re quietly, in the back of our minds always silently identifying. While others daydream, we match & identify in our minds eye what smell or tastes goes with what, so you can imagine how difficult it was to be one minute wondering if they’d somehow injected an extra dose of oxygen in this high country air, to the next minute finding my nose lifting to a delicious whiff of BBQ wafting through the atmosphere.  I’m ashamed to say that from that moment on, I was absorbed in my quest in naming the source of such heavenly smells & cannot adequately report on the rest of the sheepy discussions as we walked the distance of a few city blocks back to the house.

There are two types of meats I’m a little ‘iffy’ about.  One is lamb & the other some game meat. They all deserve in my humble opinion a good understanding of cookery; so it was a bit of a shock to find this mesmerizing aroma came from a simple oil marinated back strap of venison that had been quickly dipped in a garlicky mixture of Worcestershire sauce & just a few minutes each side on the hot, hot BBQ before landing beside the incredible salads on my plate.  It was without a doubt deliciously tender & moist & I found myself lining up again at the BBQ interrogating the neighboring breeder of such goodliness attempting to understand.  Could it be we Chefs had over-complicated game cookery?  I will share with you in a later post my upcoming visit to their Deer Stud.

Dorper talk lingered on out on the verandah, & I found myself in the kitchen watching with great anticipation as the lamb roast was prepared for the slow combustion wood fired oven.  A simple and traditional prep of fresh rosemary with a little sliver of garlic were inserted into pockets & a few pieces of anchovy draped the joint, just a splash or two of water in the baking dish before disappearing into the oven.  The results a few hours later were stunning as we sat down to some good old-fashioned country hospitality.

Roast Lamb

Medley of Baked Root Vegetables

Assortment of Green Leaf Vegetables tossed in Herb Butter

Selection of homemade condiments

I was surprised & incredibly gladdened to find the dorper lamb meat does not have the mutton taste & smells that causes so many people to avoid eating lamb.  Because it’s not a fleece sheep, there is a noticeable lack of the sometimes-strong lanolin taste in sheep meat.   It’s tender, succulent and fine textured & I am truly a convert.