Almost twenty years ago, we came up with a little formulation in an attempt to describe Irish artisan foods. Rather than focusing on turnover, the number of employees, the number of outlets served, and so on, we adopted a completely abstract matrix. Artisan food, we suggested, was defined by the Four P's:
The Place;
The Person;
The Product;
The Passion.
If a food represented a person's creativity, reflected the place it came from, was a defining example of that type of food, and was driven by the need to be the best it could possibly be, then it was a true artisan food.
We must have been thinking about Calvey's Achill Blackface Mountain Lamb.
For fifty years, Martin Calvey and his family have bred, processed and cooked Achill Blackface mountain lamb. More than anything else, this unique meat defines the island of Achill for us. The blackface lamb is small, and can be over-wintered, even on the harsh terroir and wild winters of Achill. It feeds on sea-salty pastures and mountain heathers, and will stroll down to the shoreline to eat washed-up seaweeds.
These things alone serve to make it unique, to bless it with an utterly distinctive taste and texture. But it is the work of the Calvey family, then, in processing and cooking the lamb that gives it the gold standard halo.
Speak to Mr Calvey, and he will explain how he carefully shepherds the lambs, one at a time, into his abattoir, in order to reduce any element of stress. Watch him and his daughter, Grainne – the butcher of the family, and one of six girls in a family of eight children – as they divide and portion a lamb, and their deftness, speed and skill is entrancing. Here is the food of the island, processed with skill by the people of the island.
Then go into Calvey's restaurant, beside the butcher's shop, and sit down and eat the lamb, cooked by Maeve Calvey and her crew.
This isn't just a culinary experience: this is a cultural experience, and there are few other cultural experiences in Ireland so rich and singular.
The blackface lamb is smaller than the mainland lamb, and really only comes into season from June onwards, so there is no Easter lamb on Achill. The meat has a particularly rich, saline flavour, and the fat is sweet. In fact, the small amount of fat, and it's delicacy, is perhaps the most differentiating fact between the Blackface lamb and its mainland cousins. It's also both very easy to cook, and very fast to cook – you can roast a shoulder in an hour or so.
Person; Place; Product; Passion – it's all there in Calvey's Achill lamb. And the good news is that you can place an order for a portioned lamb and have it delivered to your door for not much more than €100. You won't come across a better bargain all year, and you won't come across a more distinctive, defining Irish food.
www.calveysofachill.com
Photographs taken at the recent event #LambWars, featuring chefs Jp McMahon and Ian Ussher to launch this year's New Season Achill Lamb.
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