Lamb is one of those traditional ingredients of spring. These days, world-wide distribution and modern farming methods allow lamb to be available year round (for better or worse), but for many years, lamb was only available in the springtime.

Lamb is a great meat to use with pomegranate juice — it’s often paired with sweet condiments like mint jelly, and the complex pomegranate flavors go well with the earthiness of the meat. For this month’s POM blogger entry, I wanted to use a part of lamb that isn’t as familiar as chops. Lamb shank is economical, and is very tasty. Served pulled over linguine, with vegetables and fresh herbs, and this meal delivers a lot of flavor, but is very easy to cook.

spring on in

This wasn’t exactly a normal dish for us. First of all, I took inspiration from Olive Garden’s Braised Beef & Tortelloni dinner. I don’t normally get inspired by chain restaurants, but this dish is actually pretty interesting. Secondly, unlike Olive Garden’s pre-prepared supply chain, I took pretty much an afternoon and early evening making this. I like doing this from time to time, though. Even though six hours of prep and cooking can be devoured in 15 minutes, it’s fun to build flavors and layer ingredients, basically practicing and expanding techniques. I usually have to do this on a weekend, though, and this was last Sunday’s dinner.

So, I made braised lamb shanks with root vegetables in veal stock and red wine, took a shank and minced it with Parmesan Reggiano, roasted garlic, and fresh oregano, stuffed it in tortelloni, and served it with sliced braised lamb shank meat and crimini mushrooms in a gravy made from the braising liquid.

You know this was good…

Been a week since the last post. No problems, just coincidences of life getting in the way. I picked up a stomach bug for most of the week, which didn’t make the idea of cooking very…well…appetizing. Then, Christey and her mom (and our daughter) went up to Cape Cod to visit family, the two older boys are with their Dad, which leaves Julian and me, toughing it out together as the men of the house. The ladies will be back late tomorrow night, but, there goes my photographer. Along with the serious SLR camera, and the point-n-shoot.

I’m down to my crappy webcam, which isn’t exactly…well…appetizing. But, I made a beer braised lamb shank tonight for myself (Julian is still working on getting teeth).

I trimmed off the major silverskin, fat, and assorted junk, salted and peppered the shank along with a few pinches of flour, and seared every bit in some olive oil. Once browned, I removed the shank and tossed in a sliced shallot, a sliced carrot, a sliced celery stalk, and four whole cloves of garlic. I tossed the veggies in the oil until lightly carmelized, then added about 1/3rd of a bottle of beer, scraping the fond off the bottom of the pan and incorporating it in the beer. Once simmered down, I added 2/3 cup of beef stock, another 1/3rd bottle of beer, a few stripped thyme spears, and 2-3 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar. Once brought up to simmer, I placed the lamb shank in the liquid, then tossed the whole pan in a 300 degree oven.

After 45 minutes, I turned the shank, added more beer and broth, and braised for another 45 minutes. Once out of the oven, I salted the shank and juice a bit more, and it was done.

Plating was the whole shank, with some of the veggies, and some sauce. Simple stuff, no food styling today!

Deconstruction: I’m always surprised by how sweet braising liquid ends up being. There are some ingredients with sugars deeply incorporated — carrots, shallots, the fat of the lamb, balsamic vinegar — but after an hour and a half of braising, it tastes like someone added a tablespoon of brown sugar when I wasn’t looking. The lamb meat was nice and tender, though I needed to trim more tendons (I have to brush my teeth now). The veggies tasted like the lamb and the sauce. I’m thinking I could have thrown just a touch of roux in the sauce, though, to thicken it slightly. It doesn’t need to be gravy, and liquid sauce is tradition, but it tasted so good, a little bit more thickness would have stuck it to everything else a little better, I think.