Last November Chef Neil Forbes entertained the Shetland public with his enthusiasm for the produce he discovered during his participation in The Shetland Food Festival week. Since then, through my involvement with The Slow Food Movement, I have discovered his restaurant, Cafe St Honoré in Edinburgh. 
I am delighted that he agreed to invent some recipes combining Native Shetland Lamb and seasonal produce for me to share. Here is the first.

Ingredients -  Serves 4

1 loin of native Shetland lamb  

1 tablespoon rendered lamb fat

2 small beetroots 2 carrots 2 parsnips

4 Pink Fir Apple potatoes  

1 stick rosemary 

Sea salt and black pepper 

Method

Wash, peel and large dice all the vegetables. Boil gently until just cooked.
Remove the lamb from the bone and remove the skin from the fat. Render any other fat  down with the skin and reserve for cooking the roots.
In a thick cast iron  frying pan, heat a little lamb fat and fry the loin until golden and sprinkle with sea salt and a little pepper. Roast the loin in a hot oven (180˚) until just pink – about 8-10 minutes.
Allow to rest.
In another cast iron frying pan, heat the remaining lamb fat and fry the vegetables until golden brown. Add a stick of rosemary and season with sea salt and pepper. Slice the roasted loin and serve with the vegetables.

I already knew about the fineness of the fleeces of the Native Shetland Sheep when I moved to Shetland in1990. What I had not expected was how good their meat tasted. For a number of years I had been grazing my flock of Buelah Speckled Faced Sheep on the herb rich nature reserves of Gloucestershire and I thought the meat tasted as good as any produced in the UK.

It took a year or two to be certain but eventually I came to understand that the extra  sweetness, tenderness and succulence of the meat I found in my Native Shetland  Lamb was consistent year after year. It also explains why my lambs were being exported to Northern Italy. They have a food culture that values quality and provenance above standardised shapes at a low price.

Back in 2005, when I looked at the numbers, I found that I was working for all the middle men in my supply chain with no income from my flock. I turned to my local cooperative,  Shetland Livestock Marketing Group for help and the following season I was able to start selling direct.

Positive feedback from friends and relations proved  that I could supply Native Shetland Lamb by post and in 2009 the Briggs' Shetland  Lamb website was launched to make my Native Shetland Lamb available to all UK mainland post codes