Craft Butchery Dinner Party: Spotlight on Dinner #5 Spring Lamb

Each month Saugatuck Craft Butchery hosts an eight course dinner party paired with wine for twenty guests that highlights a different protein and Craft's pasture to table ethos. This approach—sourcing whole pasture-raised animals from small to medium-sized farms—follows what is often referred to as a nose-to-tail philosophy of utilizing the entire animal. These dinners are a celebration of this approach, a collaboration among the butchers and chefs at Craft, and a creative challenge for the Craft culinary team. 

"They are so talented that my challenge as an owner, is to keep their interest.These dinners are a creative outlet and they celebrate what the shop does. They use all parts of the animal, from snout to tail," said owner and head butcher, Ryan Fibiger. Selecting the themes for these dinners may be a team effort, but much of the culinary planning comes from Mark Hepperman, Craft's Resident Chef and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America with over 20 years of experience. 

One of the previous events in this series was the "Spring Lamb Dinner" which utilized two thirty pound young lambs for eight courses sourced from Josef Meiller farm and slaughterhouse in Pine Plains, New York. Each of the courses featured a different part of the animal and a different execution, including lamb bacon, lamb tartar, lamb sausage, lamb tongue, lamb loin, lamb belly, and sheeps milk-based cheese.

Each course is paired with a wine selected by Mimi McLaughlin of Saugatuck Grain and Grape. 

For more information on these dinners, visit Craft online.

1: Lambs lettuce, lamb bacon, roasted fiddle heads, meyer lemon

2: Lamb tartar, fava beans, pickled ramps, green almond pesto

3: lamb sausage, Moroccan spices, dried apricot purée

4: soft poached farm egg, lamb tongue, asparagus

5: boneless lamb loin, English pea panna cotta, pea blossoms

6: slow cooked lamb belly, white beans, porcini broth

7: Kinderhook Creek from Old Chatham Sheepherding Co., rhubarb, celery

8: Sheeps milk ricotta cheesecake, cherries, tarragon