[announcer] Smyth County, Virginia, located in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, offering outdoor adventures and small-town charm.

Details online at visitsmythcountyva.com.

[uplifting music] [Chef Missy] The older I get, the more I realize that no matter how I spend my time, a sacrifice is being made in another area of my life.

America is expensive, and American culture is rooted in ambition, where we are constantly driving ourselves towards the next thing.

What are we sacrificing in order to achieve goals, realize dreams, and maybe even just to get by?

The French say that we live to work, and maybe they're right.

Even in my small attempts to live a simpler life, I'm still doing some form of work.

There is always something or someone that didn't get my time and attention.

Some people claim time is their love language and treasure time above all.

So, giving your time is a precious gift because you are indeed sacrificing something for the sake of another.

The lamb is a spiritual animal and represents atonement.

It was chosen as the symbol of sacrifice above all other livestock because of their vulnerability, meekness, innocence, and submissiveness.

A lamb's obedience and lack of stubbornness causes them to be easily raised and harvested.

You are what you eat, and a lamb's gentle personality breeds meat easy to cook and digest.

Whether grilled, roasted, or braised, the lamb brings kindness and old-world flavor to every delicious bite.

Hi, I'm Chef Missy, and I'm the French Magnolia, a true-blue southern gal with French ancestry running through my veins.

My husband, Thomas, is a wine expert and hospitality veteran.

Throughout our careers, we've worked for some incredible restaurants and hotels, from Atlanta to New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, to the edge of a mountain at a five-star Relais & Chateau.

But pretty soon, the French Magnolia, a luxury movable feast company, was born.

We pour into your home and set an elaborate stage for a multi-course culinary and wine experience.

We settled in Bristol, Virginia, a good place to live.

And when we're not working, we love connecting with local farms and Appalachian culture.

From farm, field, garden, and stream, to chef and somm, to the table, all in one day, this is the French Magnolia Cooks.

Today, I'm outside Abingdon, Virginia, about ten minutes from Bristol, catching up with Trevor and Kim Hansard of Red-Tail Grove, a veteran-owned business offering farm eggs, gorgeous produce, and organically raised lamb.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Trevor, share with us the history and provenance of this land and what made you decide to be a farmer.

-This land, and a lot of the land around us, used to be part of the Whittaker Farm, which goes back to the mid-1800s.

And we found it, we were looking to move the area, we wanted to start farming, wanted about this size to kind of experiment with and figure it out, and it just totally worked out.

[Chef Missy] How many acres do you have here?

[Trevor Hansard] So we have right at ten acres.

-I know you have a strong military background.

Tell us about your military career.

-Yeah, so I was in the Air Force for 13 years.

The job I did was essentially a version of Air Traffic Control, but rather than be at airfields, I was typically a little more forward, working mainly with the Army guys.

So I got to do a lot of fun stuff with that, a lot of different experiences, but was gone a lot.

And so, you know, we get married, Kim and I, we have our boys, and, you know, finally the math just didn't make sense anymore.

It was like, "Hey, I gotta be home."

So I'm reading these books, and one of the first ones I read was You Can Farm by Joel Salatin.

And it was kind of a down and dirty reality of, if you want to start farming, here's what you need to think about.

And here's the way you need to approach it mentally, which for me is, I like to start with that kind of framework.

And he talked about the hard work, the things you're gonna have to kind of give up to a degree, and then a way to think about farming that's a very business-first approach.

-I know you made a lot of sacrifices being in the military, but talk to me about the kinds of sacrifices that you've had to make as a farmer.

-There's definitely an aspect of sacrifice to being in the military, and there's a sacrifice, you know, especially when you're gone a lot.

Don't get to see your kids, your family, your wife, things like that.

But I think like with most things in life, you have to be willing to make sacrifices to be successful in some way or the other.

You know, I'm not putting myself at risk like I used to be, but, you know, one of the things that we haven't done in a long time now is take a vacation, for example.

There is a commitment every day to the animals.

There's planning for the garden.

There's aspects to that that unlike even my last job where I could take leave for a week and just, you know, get on a plane and go somewhere and hang out and go skiing or something.

It's a little bit more difficult with the animals, with the chickens, with the sheep.

So, that's something that was interesting to adjust to, but now that we have, I think that you get more than you lose.

It's more fun to grab my chainsaw and go, you know, cut a tree down, split some firewood than it is to go sit in an office for eight hours a day in front of a computer.

The lambs, they're very sweet, they're very calm, they're very chill, which is kind of fun to work with.

And once they get to know you, you know, you can kind of handle them just a little bit.

They don't want you like grabbing them, but some of the ewes will let me give them a little pet, or Kim will give them little treats.

So they were, for us, they were just a very natural fit to the type of farming we're trying to do with the management-intensive grazing and then also just the type of animal that we wanted to deal with.

[Chef Missy] How long is a lamb called a lamb?

[Trevor] Yeah, so basically up to a year.

[Chef Missy] And then after you're a lamb, you're a sheep.

And how long are you a sheep before you're a mutton?

[Trevor] And after two years, you're a sheep.

You're going to be mutton if you get processed at that point.

-Right, mutton stew.

-Right, exactly.

-Big in England.

-Yes, ma'am.

-Yeah.

-The challenge is, you know, you have to actually deal with the weather and you have to deal with nature and life, which is just naturally unpredictable.

But as far as the blessings you get for it, one is, you know, I do get to see my kids and wife now a lot more than I used to.

It's just nice to kind of, with your family, have that sense of place.

-I want to go meet some lamb and I want to meet some egg layers.

-Yeah, let's go.

[gentle music] [Chef Missy] Now, a ewe is a girl.

Right?

-[Kim Hansard] Yes.

[Chef Missy] And a boy is called what?

[Kim] So if it's an intact male, it's a ram.

If he's been castrated, it is called a wether.

-Who is going to harvest today?

-So we have nine wethers that will be going to harvest.

[Chef Missy] Who's this big giant guy over here?

[Kim] So our chubby one, that is Sean.

He is the mascot, keepsake.

He was one of our original lambs.

We named him, you should never name your dinner.

[Chef Missy] And Sean is really a mutton at this point, right?

[Kim] He's a hundred percent mutton.

[Chef Missy] A hundred percent mutton.

I didn't know that when you eat a rack of lamb that we're going to have tonight for dinner, I'm so excited about having you guys over for dinner, but I didn't realize that it's all male meat.

[gentle music] -We are back here in the French Magnolia Culinary Center, and Tom and I have just had a fabulous day.

We have invited Trevor and Kim to our house for dinner tonight, and most obviously, I am going to cook skillet rack of lamb.

When you think of lamb, you think of Mediterranean cuisine, and most obviously, Greek cuisine.

Tzatziki is a classic Mediterranean pairing with all things lamb.

The first thing, mise en place, mise en place , everything in its place.

Get all of your cucumbers peeled and de-seeded.

Now we're gonna cut the cucumbers in half, and then lengthwise.

With a spoon, just run down the middle right here.

You want to put your cheesecloth in the bowl and get it ready, mise en place .

Take all of your peeled and de-seeded cucumbers, put them right in the food processor.

Easy peasy.

Okay, give it a few pulses.

[food processor whirring] Go ahead and keep pulsing the food processor until the cucumbers are completely broken down.

[food processor whirring] Pour in all the goody.

Gather the cheesecloth... and squeeze all the liquid out.

You have to do this step because if you don't get the water out of the cucumber, then the tzatziki is going to be runny and loose.

Four cups of full fat Greek yogurt, three cups of crumbled feta.

Okay, now I'm gonna set this in the refrigerator while I'm working on the garlic.

Next step, smash and mince 20 cloves of garlic.

And we want to mince this garlic really small.

This is just a little over two packages of fresh dill that's been de-stemmed.

Give it a light chop.

Add in your minced garlic and stir.

Really want to get that garlic evenly distributed throughout the tzatziki.

Slowly drizzle in one cup of organic extra virgin olive oil.

Stir and fold.

The zest of three lemons.

I'm not going to be using the liquid from these lemons because I find that it causes the tzatziki to get thin and liquidy.

You want to evenly distribute the lemon just like we did with the garlic.

A generous pinch of sea salt, and a generous tablespoon of white pepper.

And give it a good stir.

Last but not least, our freshly chopped dill.

And I always save the fresh herbs for the very end.

Okay, get your tzatziki in the refrigerator.

Let it chill for at least an hour.

It's gonna firm back up, and be perfect at the table with your lamb.

Okay, to go with our skillet rack of lamb, we're gonna have sweet garlic naan.

When you roast the garlic, it gets smushy and sweet and spreadable.

Just get a bowl of raw, fresh, peeled organic garlic.

Sprinkle it with some good quality extra virgin olive oil.

Give it a good toss.

Add a couple of generous pinches of sea salt.

Okay, this garlic is gonna roast at 300 for about 50 minutes.

Okay, our sweet garlic is almost finished roasting, but while it's finishing up, we're gonna work on our couscous side dish.

Many people think that couscous is a grain or a rice, but it is truly a pasta, and it's a pasta made from semolina flour and water.

And it pairs beautifully with all of the Mediterranean fishes, and also all things lamb.

Add four tablespoons of full fat, good quality butter.

I'm gonna add a little bit of olive oil to the butter.

It'll keep the butter from burning.

Then add four sliced shallots.

Get two cups of fresh organic radishes.

Now on the larger radishes, I like quartering them.

Okay, get these radishes in the skillet.

Add a generous pinch of sea salt.

Now I'm gonna put the skillet in the oven at 400 and let these radishes roast in the butter and olive oil and sea salt while we're cooking the couscous.

So we're gonna take four cups of organic chicken stock, and I am gonna add a generous pinch of salt to the chicken stock.

While the organic chicken stock is coming to a boil, let me show you how to deal with the mint.

I love to stack the little mint leaves.

and roll them in a tight little mint cigar.

And then finally, just work over your little mint roll.

Now just add the couscous.

Now, you want to get that flame on low, low, low, low, and then cover the couscous and let it cook for ten minutes.

Okay, the couscous is done, and it is perfect.

Add the caramelized shallots and roasted radish, and add two cups sweet green peas, and give it a little stir.

Add a generous pinch of sea salt, fresh cracked pepper.

Now just put it in your serving vessel.

I'm gonna keep the mint cold and toss it in right before we serve it at the table.

Okay, our roasted garlic is done, and it is absolutely perfect.

The garlic should be soft and smushy, and easy to mash.

Just take a little bit of that sweet garlic and just spread it, mm.

Cut the naan on the bias.

Sweet garlic toasted naan.

Delish!

Yay, I'm so glad you guys made it.

-We're super excited to be here, it's so close.

-I know.

Abingdon and Bristol.

-Yeah.

-Oh yeah.

-Two peas in a pod.

-We're two peas in a pod, I love it.

Oh, that's beautiful.

[Thomas] Yeah.

[Chef Missy] Little Veuve Clicquot, we love Veuve.

-We did a wine teaching on this recently, didn't we?

-We did, on the pink.

Cheers!

-Cheers.

-Cheers!

-Thank you, guys.

-Absolutely.

-Thanks so much.

-You're so welcome.

Thank you.

What a treat.

-Oh, that's pretty good.

-It is good.

-You're right, that is pretty good.

-Yeah, I'll take it.

[all laughing] -This is what you see at the grocery store.

It is indeed Frenched where the fat and meat has been cut away from the bone up here.

But I am going to take it a step farther and really French it down to the lollipop.

I am going to cut along the bone...

Here.

And here.

It's a little bit of a messy process, but not too bad.

This is like a tendon... [Thomas] Sinewy.

[Chef Missy] Sinewy, it's sinewy for sure.

And this is fat, and this is kind of gristle in here.

So it's not going to be a delicious bite.

This is what we're going for.

-[Thomas] Gotcha, yeah.

-[Chef Missy] Right?

I've done a nice French cleanup all the way down, gotten rid of the excess fat.

There's still enough fat in here to create flavor, but yet it's very pretty.

It's gonna be very elegant on the plate.

This is just really good quality extra virgin olive oil, a little salt, little black pepper, and Herbes de Provence.

So the lamb hangs for about three days, and that's as long as it needs to get all the blood to run out.

-Right, so you're aging the meat when you hang it.

So the longer you hang it, obviously, the longer the meat ages, but it also kind of loses some of that meat mass as it kind of shrinks a bit.

-Okay.

-So for lamb, yeah, it's like the three to five days.

You let it hang, and then you take it down and you butcher it up.

[Chef Missy] So there's this big fat piece right here.

Just use the point of the scissors.

And again, you can do this with a knife, but I find you have more control with the scissors.

[Trevor] Where's lamb among your favorite meats to cook?

[Chef Missy] I would say lamb is my personal favorite meat.

I just remember having it as a young girl, and just thought it was the most delicious thing in the world.

And every year, my family would go to the Greek Festival in Atlanta, and I just love the food and the music and the people, and how loud and affectionate everyone was.

And I was like, wow, that's really different from my family.

And I loved it, so it's a special memory.

You want it sitting at room temperature a minimum of one hour.

[Trevor] Okay, why is that?

-Because with meat, you want to make sure that not just the outside is room temperature, but the inside of the meat is room temperature.

Okay, we have a beautiful smoke point going.

This is what I call skillet rack of lamb.

We're not going to finish it in the oven.

We're going to do everything in the skillet, and then it's going to finish cooking in the resting process on the board.

So this is medium-rare, nice and springy.

I can see a little pink, nice and springy.

That's going to continue to cook.

Beautiful, woo-hoo!

Nice.

Gorgeous!

We have Israeli couscous with braised radishes, sweet peas, and fresh mint.

We have organic roasted carrots that have been tossed in French Dijon mustard with sea salt.

We have our sweet garlic naan, our homemade tzatziki, and the star of the show, the lamb.

Woo!

Yay!

Okay, let's go eat.

-Let's go eat.

-Let's go eat!

[upbeat music] -A great way to learn about wine, to pick wine, to consider wine for dinner, to look at the label.

Learning how to read a label is a pretty good thing to know, when it comes to French wine especially.

This wine is coming from a place called Givry.

Givry is a small place in Burgundy, France.

The top two are together called Côte d'Or.

So between Côte d'Or and Mâconnais is a place called Chalonnaise.

In Chalonnaise is where you find Givry.

So this vineyard, which is Clos du Cras Long, is a very small place within Givry.

This place, Clos du Cras Long, is 4.2 acres.

That's it.

Not only that, but there's more than one person, more than one domain, farming and getting grapes from this plot, okay?

It's a small plot, so it's very specific to its terroir.

It is one of the 30 Premier Cru plots within Givry, right.

Givry is a very small place in Chalonnaise, in Burgundy.

The more specific you get in the terroir, in the place where the grapes are grown, the more expensive it gets, first of all.

But also, you can kind of count on what you're getting in the bottle.

This is also one of the few Premier Cru places within Givry, and it's soil-based.

This particular winemaker is Vincent Lumpp, right?

He and his son, Baptiste, are the winemakers for this particular vineyard.

-What's the grape that makes this wine?

[Trevor] The grape in this, being that it's from Burgundy, is Pinot Noir.

And they have five plots that they pull Pinot Noir from, this being one of them.

And it's a shared plot with several other winemakers.

So being a Premier Cru soil, a lot of winemakers are trying to get grapes from there so that they can have a Premier Cru on their label, basically.

It'll say 'monopole,' which for us is 'monopoly,' which is they are the only people sourcing grapes from that plot.

They got all of it, all right?

And in France, soil is everything.

Drinking French wine is not like drinking wine from other regions, for a lot of reasons.

It's very regulated, it's not a made-up thing, what they put in the bottle and what they put on the label to get you to buy it.

It's, this is what it is, where it's from, how good it is, just by reading the label.

Other wine-growing regions are, unfortunately, trying to compete with the ideal soil and climate for these varietals.

So in the process of trying to compete with the proper soil and climate for a varietal that they would like to grow in a soil and climate that they don't have, there's a manipulation that must occur, right.

And that's gonna be on the vine with pesticides, herbicides, and a number of things that really takes away from the expression of the terroir.

In Burgundy, until recently, it was illegal to water your vines, okay, because they want the expression of that year.

There's another thing on the label, it's a date, all right, and if the year isn't expressed in the bottle, what's the point of having it on the bottle in the first place?

If you think about this particular place, it's 4.2 acres, and there's several farmers or several winemakers pulling grapes out of this farm to make great wine to ship across overseas to here so we can enjoy it today, with a date on it, so we can enjoy an expression of their soil and climate that year, tonight, right?

If you manipulate it, you don't get that.

It's a lie.

[all laughing] [Chef Missy] Territory.

[laughing] [orchestral music] Heavenly Father, we come before You in the name of Jesus.

[orchestral music] -Total compliments to the chef.

[laughing] Thank you.

[orchestral music] -Delicious bread, which is always good to break together, but the garlic is, kind of owns it, right?

It's really good.

[laughing] -Here's to Southwest Virginia!

[all cheering] [♪♪♪♪♪] [Chef Missy] A sacrifice is the offering of something precious.

Maybe it's your time, your money, or your talents and creativity, and we need to discern what we are indeed sacrificing.

Maybe we should take our cues from the French and work to live instead of living to work.

But there are some things I don't mind working for, and lamb is one of them.

Lamb speaks of old and exceptional.

And while eating lamb might not transform your life or personality, it elevates a culinary experience from ordinary to one of luxury.

Perhaps there was a sacrifice, but in the end, it's a triumph... and that's something worthy of our time.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [announcer] Smyth County, Virginia, offering a business friendly environment, with partnerships like Smyth Strong, fostering entrepreneurship and growth.

Details at smythcounty economicdevelopment.com.

[music fades out]