Charleston Wine & Food Festival Recipe Contest: Lamb Tacos

It's time for round #3 of the recipe contest for the Charleston Wine & Food Festival. See my recipes for round 1 and 2 to catch up.

Guess what? I did not win either round, and I very highly doubt I'll win this round either, but I thank all of you for your support and votes. If that sounds a bit snarky, so be it. But you can still VOTE if you want ;)

I'm just going to make the food I want to eat and be grateful for the great products I get to work with (in this case it's lamb from Craig of Border Springs Farm).

The challenge was to make a dish with a lamb shoulder. Right away I decided to make Lamb Tacos. The recipe below explains how to roast a shoulder of lamb, but when it comes to toppings, I trust you can figure out on your own the amounts of each ingredient you want to use.

Lamb Tacos

Ingredients
4 large garlic cloves, microplaned
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon chipotle pepper
salt to taste
5 pound bone-in lamb shoulder
1 cup water

5 1/2" yellow corn tortillas
radishes, thinly sliced
pickled onions
avocado, sliced
feta, crumbled
cilantro, chopped
lime wedges

Directions

1. Combine the garlic, lemon juice, chipotle pepper and salt and rub all over the lamb shoulder. Cover and refrigerate over night.
2. Preheat the oven to 350. Add 1 cup of water to the bottom of a baking pan, put the lamb on top and cover with aluminum foil.
3. Roast the lamb for 3 hours. If you have more patience (and time), you could roast the lamb for an extra hour or 2.
4. Allow the lamb to cool and remove as much of the meat as you can.

5. Heat the tortillas: you can do this directly on the gas stove, on a skillet, in a microwave or in the oven.
6. Top the tortillas with pulled lamb and the rest of the toppings.

These were seriously restaurant quality tacos. I loved the combination of colors, textures and flavors. You get the crunchy radishes and pickled onions paired with the buttery avocado and tender lamb not to mention the salty firm feta. Feel free to use queso fresco instead of feta if you can find it at your grocery store.

If you like this recipe, please give me a VOTE.

With the rest of the lamb I ended up making Lamb & Potato Enchilada Casserole, which was awesome. I will publish a recipe for it next year. Y'all come back now!