Producer Spotlight: Mottainai Lamb

We love getting friendly with our favourite producers.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be hanging out with the faces behind some of QT Sydney Executive Chef, Nic Wood’s most adored produce.

To kick things off, we sat down with Mottainai Lamb’s First Lady, aka Founder and Director, Suzannah Moss-Wright to learn about our favourite loin, and with Father’s Day coming up how she’ll be spending the day with the Moss-Wright family.

Suzannah, hello! Word on the paddock is Mottainai Lambs are fed a little differently to the others. Tell us about their diets?

Mottainai carrot and olive fed lambs probably enjoy a more healthy and balanced diet than most adults, and I certainly pay more attention to their meal preparation each day than I do for my own children! The lamb’s unique diet includes 80% carrot and olive “waste” – product that is perfectly nutritious but outside the stringent specification for retail sales because it is misshapen, too big or has a small blemish. Rather than continue sending this food waste to landfill, we have partnered with horticulture producers and repurpose organic products such as fresh green carrot tops collected from the field daily after harvest, whole carrots, carrot pomace (after juicing), olive pomace (after 1st press olive oil production), and sedimentary olive oil. The remaining 20% is a combination of lupins (for protein), barley or wheat (for starch) and hay (for fibre).

There is only one thing we love more than lamb… And that’s lamb that supports zero waste. Could you tell us about this?

Mottainai Lamb embodies the values my husband, Deon Moss, and I represent for authenticity, transparency and sustainability. We believe in the future of Australian agriculture and established Mottainai Lamb 4.5 years ago to demonstrate that it is possible to change the way we produce food to achieve a more sustainable and efficient food production system for the future. We live in a world with increased demand for protein and competing land use, so it is not acceptable to see hundreds of tonnes of perfectly nutritious vegetables being buried in landfill. We partnered with a carrot and olive producer (Sumich) and applied our scientific skills (both my husband and I have tertiary science degrees) combined with our practical knowledge of farming to develop a feeding program for lambs based around our philosophy of zero waste focusing on the waste products that Sumich produce.

We love a family affair! And with Father’s Day coming up, how will you be spending the day?
This is a hard question this year. Usually Father’s Day is a celebration in honour of “the Big Man” (and Bunnings is the “Big Man’s Shop”!!) where the children and I write a new chapter in his “Super Hero Dad” book that we have been filling out each year since they could talk, updating it with their fond memories and anecdotes of all the things we love about him and what makes him great (such as how many heavy things he can lift or carry at the same time!). This year, however, I would love to be spending it with my own father in NSW as time is slipping by and I miss him more the older I get. But Covid-19 is restricting this get together so perhaps it will be a lot of time on the phone whilst we appreciate what we have, being together as our little family of four on the other side of the country from family and friends.

Most importantly, what/where will you be eating?

Lobster and Lamb – of course! It is funny that we still regard lamb as our ‘celebration’ meal given how much of it we eat, but I honestly miss the incredible taste and flavour of Mottainai carrot and olive fed lamb if I don’t have it for a little while. We try really hard to include other proteins in our diet, but we keep going back to the lamb!

My personal favourite is our Banjo Shoulder, slow roasted for 4-hours with a simple salad. This dish never fails and we have served it to the best chefs in the world with minimal preparation and witnessed the contented silence around the table as people just enjoy the simple pleasure of eating honest and uncomplicated food, fresh from the farm. We are fortunate that the farm is 10km from the beautiful Indian Ocean where the Western Rock Lobster abounds so we might go out in the morning to pull our lobster pots and mix the meal up a bit ‘Lancelin Style’. Our children will get a terrible shock when the leave home and have to buy and cook for themselves – they don’t realise how lucky we are!

We know the Mottainai Lamb Loin Roast is a favourite of Chef Nic Wood’s. Could you tell us how to best fire it up?

You will never taste a piece of lamb like the Mottainai Lamb Loin Roast. Heavily marbled with a beautiful sweet fat cap that crisps up, the meat will be tender pink and melt in your mouth. It is cooked on the bone then carved and served as a fillet intended to be shared. This piece was the feature dish at Grand Hyatt Tokyo in September last year and the hotel still has guests coming in asking for it again – it was so memorable for them!

When you eat meat that has been respected as much as we care our lambs, you can taste the umami. My vision for Mottainai Lamb when we created the company 4.5 years ago was to become a truly sustainable Australian business that invests back in Australia, creating wealth and opportunities for future generations. “Mottainai” is a Japanese word that means ‘it is a shame to waste something without realising its true value’. We interpret Mottainai to mean Reduce | Reuse | Recycle | Respect | Reconnect.

Interview by Naomi Rheinberger