How to Make BBQ Lamb Kebabs and Thai Pesto

Ingredients:
1 ½ lbs lamb loin
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 tbs lime juice
Marinate lamb with garlic, lime, olive oil, and salt and pepper for 2 hours/overnight
2 cups basil, 1 cup cilantro, ½ cup mint
1 tbs lime juice
1 tsp Tabasco
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs ginger
+ 1 clove minced garlic
¼ cup toasted macademia nuts
6 tbs olive oil

Brian Streeter: Napa Cab and Lamb is quite often paired together so that the
structure of Cabernet really stands up to the meatiness of lamb and
they’d really compliment one another.

Julianne Laks: The key thing to making a great cabernet is to grow it right, and
then to pick it at optimum maturity. And we know we do that at
Cakebread, we’re the best at growing the fruit, thanks to our
viticulturist, Toby Halkovich.

Brian Streeter: One thing that’s nice about this is the flavors are really bright and
fresh and should have about the same consistency of your more
traditional Italian Pesto. If you're not familiar with fish sauce, it is
rather fragrant, but if you’d never had it before I encourage you not
to leave it out because it is one of those key ingredients. You may
not necessarily pick up on it when it's in a dish, but if you leave
out, there's something seems you're missing.

With bamboo skewers, usually you want to soak them in water. It
slows down the process of them burning. When you do go to
thread any sticks like this for grilling, don’t leave gaps in between,
this just means that that’s where it’s going to burn and that part is
going to stay on the grill.

The other thing is, you want to keep the end covered. If the end of
the skewers exposed like that, that will burn off as well. Put a strip
of foil down over the front of the grill, that way when you do set
down your sticks, in the end, you keep over the foil, in that way,
it's not exposed directly to heat, and that’s a nice little trick. I think
that you can employ at home.

Personally, I think lamb should be about medium in the center, I
don’t like it too rare. And I think it gets a little bit chewy and by
the same token, I don’t like it well done. But by all means, cook it
to your preferred doneness.

Julienne Laks: Oh beautiful, it goes with the wine very well. The bigness of the
lamb and the spice to it, and the tannin in the wine match perfectly.

Brian Streeter: think it’s got really nice bright flavors to it, which just makes a
nice contrast, I think, to the richness of the lamb.

Julienne Laks: The diversity of the microclimates that the fruit comes from really
makes the wine very, very complex. With cooler region in
Carneros, you get a lot of bright fruit and fresh acidity. The
warmer areas of the valley, you get a very rich, ripe, black fruit
flavors with a lot of tannic structure. So the combination of
microclimates give you a full range of flavors and aromas.

The wine has a big bold, tannic structure that matches very equally
with the dish. It's very, very nice.

Brian Streeter: Thank you.

Julienne Laks: Congratulations, that’s great!