ABBACCHIO / SPRING LAMB
Warm weather, melting snow and blossoming flowers. These are all symbols welcoming the coming of spring. In Italy, spring lamb or abbacchio is an ancient tradition signifying as it does the renewal of life and the welcoming of springtime. Since earliest times, flocks of spring lamb or abbacchi begin to appear in the fields as spring arrives, just in time to become the succulent centerpiece of Easter dinner. Lamb is one of the great delicacies of a pastoral culture, but as a symbol of innocence it is also the sacrificial dish par excellence.
In Italy today, nearly everyone eats abbacchio. Just 30 to 60 days old and weighing less than 15 pounds, spring lamb had been fed only upon its mother’s milk, so its flesh is tender, buttery and succulent, delicately veiled with a fine layer of fat. The poet Juvenal (AD 60 to ca AD 127) once (facetiously) wrote of baby lamb as “The tenderest of the flock, with more milk than blood, that has not lost its virginity by eating grass.”
Abbacchio may get its name from the stick used to kill the lambs, for in ancient times, the Roman dialect meant killed, as in “sacrificed”, with a particular compassionate nuance when used to refer to nursing lambs, tender symbols of innocence. In the early days of the 12th century, shepards used to bring their flocks into Rome so people could select their tiny victims. Nowadays, the expression sentirsi abbacchiato, means literally to feel downbeat or demoralized,
Abbacchi are often sold whole, though one can also buy them cut in half or quartered (if you do buy abbacchio in pieces, remember that the animal should be small; if it's too large it's no longer abbacchio). Every ounce of the animal is consumed with relish, from legs to ribs, organ meats to intestines and brains. This confirms the lamb did not die in vain.
At Babbo, we serve Abbacchio Cacio e Uovo – Spring Lamb with an egg and cheese sauce. Egg, another symbol of spring (the seeds of life Flowring within in a thin shell), are a perfect accompaniment to the mild and tender meat of abbacchi.
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