Recipe (What we're having for dinner tonight!)

Lamb Shanks

Take one or two lamb or hogget shanks per person. Trim off all the fat and sinewy bits you can. sprinkle with salt and pepper. Brown quickly in a frying pan if you can be bothered.

Preheat the over to about 190 degrees C

For Four shanks,

Chop up into dice two medium sized onions and two or three carrots (depending on size) and place them in a large roasting dish along with four or five cloves of garlic. You can also put a couple of chopped sticks of celery if you like it, but I dont. Put two or three sprigs of rosemary in with the veges.

Place the shanks on top of the mixed veges.

Add a carton of readymade stock (I use beef but it doesnt matter much) and some water to cover about 2/3 of the shanks. If you dont have a carton of stock you can use stock cubes and some water, And if you havn't got stock cubes, just use water.

Add a good slosh of red wine and a bit more salt and pepper.


Put the dish in the oven and ignore it for about an hour, then turn take it out and turn the shanks over.

Put it back in the oven, and ignore for another hour and a half.

When its cooked, the meat will be coming away from the bones and be soft & yummy.

Take the shanks out of the dish, and using a potato masher or a blender, puree the vege/stock mixture to make a sauce. Sometimes it needs to be thickened with cornflour, sometimes its thick enough as is. Taste and season as necessary.

Serve the shanks with lots of mashed potato and the sauce on top of everything. Oh, and some steamed broccoli is good to have with this.

Mmmmmmmmmm

(A variation on this is to add some cubes of Kumara to the dish halfway through cooking, and not puree the sauce at the end.)

And again, Mmmmmmmm.