Experimental Cooking - Lamb Shank in Red Wine

Makes 2

Ingredients:

• 2 Lamb Shanks
• 1 Bottle of Red Wine
• Fresh Rosemary
• 3 Anchovy fillets
• Lawry's seasoning salt
• Dash of Soy Sauce
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Sticks of Celery
• 5 Cloves of Garlic
• 1 Leek
• 2 1/2 pints Beef Stock
• 4 Desiree Potatoes

The Technique

Chop the leek and start sweating down in a large stock pan. Add chopped carrot and celery once the leeks are soft. Cook these for a few minutes more and season with salt and pepper. Season the lamb shanks with Lawrys (love using this stuff on red meat, really seems to bring out the Umami flavor), then add them to the pan - brown them off at a fairly high heat. Once browned, deglaze the bottom of the pan with some red wine. 

Once ready, pour the rest of the red wine into the pot and add the beef stock - enough to cover the shanks. Add the 3 anchovy fillets (they should melt into the sauce and add extra flavor) and a dash of soy sauce. Add some chili flakes, 3 sprigs of rosemary and put the lid on, lower the heat and simmer for 2 hours or so (want to get the lamb to fall right off the bone).

Once the lamb is ready, remove from the pan and wrap in tin foil to keep warm. Now reduce the sauce as much as possible to make it nice and viscous. As you are reducing the sauce put the peeled potatoes in a pan and boil for 20 mins.

Once the potatoes are soft, add a load of butter to taste, a splash of milk or cream and mash the crap out of them. If you want to be poncy you can pass them through a sieve, but that's up to you. It's a bit of effort, but makes them extra smooth. I couldn't be arsed myself and just mashed em the normal way...

So after reducing your sauce to a nice thick consistency, or if like me you get bored after about 40 mins and just want to eat the damn thing, throw in some corn starch to thicken that up. Mashed potatoes on the bottom, shank on top, then pour on that gravy. As Jamie "fat tongue" Oliver would say, Pukka!

The Score

WIN - the gravy was awesome with the mash, but the lamb shanks could have done with a while longer, weren't quite at the fall off the bone stage. So next time I will cook em for about 3 hours or so.