Early in the morning, I started getting the clay oven ready. The night before I had prepared my vegetables mise en place. I wanted to do an individual side dish to go with the marinated roasted lamb. I made a variety of 17 different vegetables and one fruit. Each one of them was cooked separately by respecting their organoleptic identities. One of them, the yucca, had an saffron touch; the fruit was a honey-and-butter-roasted pineapple. The other vegetables were mostly prepared by respecting their original flavors.
I also made a vegetable broth with the left overs, then reduced it, gave it a bacon perfume, and added a few small pieces of fresh goat cheese. This broth was added to the vegetables right before they went into the clay oven, when the lamb was almost ready. I also added a baby lamb rib to each of the vegetable side dishes. This menu dedicated to lamb was a good option for that rainy day. The clay oven gives everything a very good taste.
Rodrigo Pacheco is a top-notch Ecuadorian chef who bases half his time in Quito and the other half in Banos, where he prepares meals made from fresh organic ingredients at Casa del Abuelo Art Hotel & Restaurant. He is also the executive chef at Cuisine Standard in Quito.
He has studied with some of the best, including Madrid Fusión in Spain, Alain Ducasse Formation in Paris, the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France, and the Instituto Inacap in Santiago, Chile among others.
He has done a Government Cultural Exchange in Canada and the Masters of Food and Wine tour of the world in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
representing Ecuador as an invited chef. Rodrigo was also a Culinary radio show host on Saberes y Sabores.
