Lamb Shanks with Sauteed Potatoes

After yesterday’s kitchen nightmare, we were determined to do better today. And we did, which is good but isn’t actually saying very much.

We did start off with a slight worry though when we re-read the recipe and found that it said to cook for 12 hours. Twelve hours is a long time. And also a very impractical time if you plan to eat at any reasonable hour of the day. We read the recipe at 12, planning to eat at about 3:30 or so. Had we followed the recipe to the letter, we’d have needed to have it in the oven at 3:30am. Madness. We figured that three hours in the oven should be enough. Also, it included butter beans which we hadn’t soaked, so we just skipped those.

As for the rest of it, we pretty much followed the recipe. We stuffed the garlic, rosemary and anchovies into slits in the lamb shanks, then browned them in a frying pan. While I did that, Kerri softened some onion and garlic in a casserole dish before adding red wine, stock, tinned tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, rosemary and thyme. The shanks went into the casserole with all of this and then into the oven for a sensible three hours. As the shanks were only half-covered by the liquid, we turned them a couple of times.

When they were almost done, we cooked some sauteed potatoes and then steamed some cabbage. The cooking liquid had thickened up and became a lovely rich sauce that would have been brilliant with the beans in it and a piece of bread to mop it up. As it was though, we served it in a dish rather than putting it directly onto the plate as we didn’t think it would go that well with the potatoes.

Despite its drastically reduced cooking time, the lamb was still soft and falling off the bone, as well as bursting with flavour. The sauce was brilliant spooned onto pieces of lamb and the potatoes were really good too. Good recovery after yesterday, phew!