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Sunday 1 February 2015

Recipe CXXII - Honey Roast Lamb Shank

I went to France a couple of days ago, to go food shopping. There is a wider selection of vegetables and meat cuts I recognise. My problem with German butchers is when you ask for a particular cut of meat, they just slice the next available piece off, no style or grace, no thinking about the direction of the muscles or anything. But the one thing that I came for, more than all the other pieces I bought, was lamb shank (souris d'agneau). It is the best piece of meat in the universe, and I really love preparing it. Although it needs 24 hours, it is very simple.



Ingredients:
4 lamb shanks
1 bottle of red wine
4 large-ish shallots, cut in half
5 cloves of garlic, halved
Some cuts of fresh thyme
100 black peppercorns, crushed with a pestle and mortar
Salt

Instructions:
Cover the lamb in salt, and then in a deep oven-proof dish with a lid, place them so there are gaps between each. Cover them in pepper, put 2 of the halved shallots in there, add the garlic, and cover the meat in the crushed pepper.

Put on the lid and marinate overnight in a cool place. An hour or two in a hurry should do, but overnight gives the best results. Turn them over at some point, so the lamb has a full bath in the red wine.

The next day, or whenever you wish to cook, turn the oven on to about 180°C. While it's warming up, put the oven-proof dish on the cooker to heat the contents. Then when the oven is fully hot, put it in there for an hour, covered.

Uncover it for a further 45 minutes so the wine reduces and then remove them from the dish. Put them in another baking tray, cover them with honey and then pour the rest of the juice in.

Put them back in for 20-30 minutes - this is how they should look when you remove them.


We ate them with roast potatoes and braised carrots, cabbage and fennel.