Wine Food Pairing and lamb, you know, those cute little woolly guys? As a child, I would never eat lamb, I guess, because my very best, favorite stuffed toy was a "Lamb Chop" look a like. My mother tried , but I resisted all her efforts to round out my palate. It wasn't until just recently, while visiting the Bahamas did I find out what I had been missing all those years.
A couple of summers ago, my husband and I spent 3 months cruising the various Bahamian islands and while we just love seafood, after a while you need something different! We were visiting Marsh Harbor, in the Abacos, and they have a terrific grocery store. Sitting in the meat case were these delightful looking lamb chops imported from New Zealand. Apparently, New Zealand and the Bahamas must have some kind of trade agreement because these guys were succulent and very inexpensive. Well, my husband, the Austrian, wanted to give them a try ... trust me, he said! OK, I have heard that before.
We went back to the boat and he went about marinading them in a mixture of fresh garlic, olive oil and rosemary from my herb garden that I grow on the boat. The barbie was set up on the back of the boat and I went to work in the galley making some of my world famous garlic mashed potatoes and putting together a fresh salad, after all, we had fresh green stuff from the store!
My husband fired up the grill and called for a suitable red wine. Well, on a boat you do have limited resources so I went in my underwear drawer and pulled out a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon that had traveled with us from the US. It is difficult and very expensive to get good wine in the Bahamas so we tend to bring our own and cruise on a floating wine cellar!
The chops went on the grill, I popped the cork and poured the first glass while the sun was getting ready to set. Houdini, our Maltese, was prancing around the cockpit, drooling and hoping for a miracle to occur ... just perhaps one chop might fall off the grill!
My husband prepared them medium rare and OH MY ... thoughts of my cute little "Lamb Chop" from childhood disappeared! The cab paired perfectly with the grilled, garlicky chops and we watched another beautiful evening in the Bahamas unfold while we enjoyed our wine food pairing. Houdini got a few choice lamb morsel's hand fed to him and a wonderful time was had by all.
Why not lamb? Wine Food Pairing. CHEERS!
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