Spiced Lamb Shanks with Olives

Continuing our weekend of Spanish food, we cooked this dish from The Real Taste of Spain. It is a dish from Andalucia in southern Spain, influenced by the Moorish occupation centuries ago, hence its spicy flavours.

Luckily, we read the recipe yesterday and realised that the lamb shanks needed to be rubbed with the spice mix and left to infuse overnight. The lamb shanks that we got were very small ones, which meant that we got two each rather than the usual large one shank per person.

The spice mix was cinnamon, ginger, cumin, coriander and paprika, which went onto the shanks yesterday. Today, when we came to cook them, we browned the shanks in a casserole dish, then removed them and browned some onions in the spicy oil. When the onions were lightly brown, we added whole whole cloves of garlic and a heaped teaspoon of flour.

After these had fried for a while, we added wine and water, adding slowly and stirring until it had all been added. Then we put the shanks back into the casserole and put it into the oven for an hour and a half before adding pitted black olives and cooking for a further half an hour.

I’d made some spiced chickpeas and spinach to eat with it, whereas Kerri made some garlicky mashed potatoes. Much as I liked the spiced chickpeas and spinach, I found myself stealing more and more mash as dinner went on.

The shanks turned out rather well – they had cooked down to become very soft and fell off the bone when prodded with a fork. The garlic had cooked down nicely and melted into the onions, making an excellent sauce.