not a baker

It’s been over a week since I’ve purchased the domain for this website and I’m finally making my first post.  (Pat on the back.)  It’s not that I haven’t been cooking..I have!  And a lot!  But I’ve been a bit discouraged by the pictures I took, so I deemed the meal unworthy for “not a baker.”  Over dinner last night (Baked curried trout with coconut rice and green beans) however, my friend said to me, “Who cares about the pictures now…just start posting and you’ll work it out from there.”  So here I am, trumping my perfectionistic side and posting a mighty good meal with less-than-mighty-good pictures.

But what an occasion to cook for!  One of my roommates got a new job today, so I thought of making him a celebratory dinner.  He’s from Tennessee, aka, a dig-them-teeth-into-some-flesh meat eater, so I thought, what better than a hearty and brutish lamb shank.  It’s quite a tough cut of meat, but cheap, and like any other tough cut, braise it for a couple of hours and you’ve got nothing but tenderlicious fare.

I really love to braise.  The layers of flavor that build up in the long, slow cooking process are really difficult to achieve elsewhere.  And in this recipe, you’ve got the assertive flavors of North Africa to mix and mingle to produce a deeply robust dish.  The standard base ingredients (onions, carrots, celery, and garlic) are joined by a rich lineup of cilantro stalks, dried apricot, almonds, and chickpeas, along with cumin, coriander, ground ginger, cinnamon and honey; not to mention the meaty flavor of the shanks permeating EVERYTHING in the dutch oven.

You’ve got everything you need for a well-rounded meal: some meat, some veg, some nuts, some beans.  Although, if I didn’t have a green salad for lunch, I would have certainly made one on the side.  Gotta have my greens.  We opened up a cheap bottle of red, as we do for most dinners, but toasted to my roommate before digging in.  Within 9 minutes, we all had the shank bones in our hands, chomping away at those few straggling strands of meat still attached.

Moroccan-style lamb shanks (adapted from Jaime Oliver’s Recipes)

Serves 4

4 lamb shanks (12 oz each)
2 carrots
2 red onions
4 garlic cloves (I used 5)
2 stalks of celery
1 large bunch fresh cilantro (I used half the bunch)
1 cup dried apricots
1 lemon
1 x 15 oz can of chickpeas
1 small bunch fresh mint
1 cup skinned almonds (I used about a third of a cup of sliced almonds)
2 x 14 oz can diced tomatoes (I used 1 x 28 oz can whole peeled San Marzano’s and just crushed them between my fingers)
all purpose flour for dusting
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander (I used whole coriander and pounded it with a mortar and pestle…as I do with black peppercorns)
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp honey
1 small dried red chile (I just used a large pinch of red pepper flakes instead)
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup lamb broth (If you go to a standard grocery store like mine, they won’t have lamb broth.  Beef broth works just fine!)
1 cup plain yogurt (I used 0% fat Fage Greek Yogurt…the meat is fatty enough
olive oil
sea salt (I used kosher salt)
black pepper

Preheat your oven to 400° F.

Prep Work:

• Peel and roughly chop the carrots, onions, and garlic.  Trim and finely chop the celery.
• Pick the cilantro leaves and put them in a bowl of cold water so they stay nice and fresh throughout the cooking process.  Finely chop the stalks.  Halve the apricots.
• Rub the lamb shanks all over with some salt and freshly ground pepper, then dust them with the flour and ground cumin.  If 2 tsp of ground cumin doesn’t cut it, just use some more.  This isn’t an exact science at all.