Yesterday afternoon Jeff Pfohl came up to help us bring stuff from our storage unit to the house. After a couple trips we had dinner. I braised a Churro lamb shoulder in a couple quarts of mixed vegetable and lamb stock with a sweet onion, a couple heads of garlic, rosemary, and bay leaves. After three or so hours of braising. I remover the shoulder and began to reduce the braising liquid. I cooked the cauilfower in a mix of water and milk with onion powder and caraway. I added a couple tablespoon of arrowroot to some Bual and added it to the reduced stock, after removing the onion garlic, and bay.
I plated the sliced shoulder with some of the sauce and the drained caulifower. The meal was very tasty with a couple very different Syrahs, a 2001 Ogier Côte-Rôtie and a 2002 Tablas Creek Syrah. The Tablas was bright berry fruit, fairly simple, with a medium finish. The Ogier was the best of last three we’ve had - very little funkiness, rich complex berry fruit, a balanced mid-palate, and a long complex finish.
The we finished with a 2000 Nine Gables Vineyard Zinfandel Pifari Cedar Vista Vineyard from California’s Shenandoah Valley, with cheeses - Epoisse, Affinois Goat Brie, Parmagiano Reggiano, and Raw-milk Morbier. The rich red and black fruit of the Zin was good with the cheeses. The fruit was also rich and complex enough to cover the 15.8% alcohol. It was a nice finish to a good, tasty meal.