Our annual purchase of a local lamb arrives around June each year, and, of course, comes complete with the leg sections called the shank - a cut that benefits from a moist, slow-cooked approach. Here in Ottawa, Canada it's hard to find a better example of a well cooked lamb shank than the Topkapi restaurant on Preston Street, where a slow cooked lamb shank is served on Turkish style on an eggplant purée that is itself spectacular. If you're hungry after reading this, that is a good solution to sate the pursuit of similar tender goodness.
In mid-afternoon yesterday, I knew our options for slow-cooking were quickly disappearing, and so I leaped to action. Though the shanks had been extracted from the freezer and were pretty much thawed already, we hadn't really planned much. Around lunch time I had thrown together some basic marinating elements - rubbed them with sesame oil and a bit of soya sauce, then some ginger, cumin, powdered rosemary and garlic, and added a drizzle of red wine. Over the next couple of hours the meat awaited action and a plan. At 4:00, time a-wasting, I decided to act, and thought about what I wanted to create. The basic idea of a moist low-temperature deal was there to get the tender fall-off-the-bone result. Also the thoughts of how lamb often does well with a Moroccan tagine vibe. That meant a mix of spices like cinnamon, coriander, ginger, fennel and star anise, to me. But important as well is that sweetness of dried fruit, and so some prunes and dried cranberries fit the bill. Most of those things were around in our kitchen, so I jumped in.
A moist baking process can result in something akin to boiled meat, so an important first step is browning. Molecular gastronomy greats like Hervé This will be the first to tell you that "sealing in the juices" is a total crock. Browning doesn't seal in anything, but it sounds good. And just saying something often doesn't make it so - in spite of what our local CPC political party attempts to do in our current federal election.
I suppose it says something about the enjoyment of food in my life that sitting here at my computer I can reach over to grab Hervé's book "Molecular Gastronomy" at a moment's notice to bag a quote. By the way, it is a good read, that book, but sadly an awkward translation. Still one learns a lot, in spite of the convoluted run-on sentences. At any rate, Hervé quotes a few examples of the seared meat, juice-sealing idea, ending with:
"...the great French chef August Escoffier (1846-1935) wrote in his book for home cooks, Ma Cuisine(1934) that the purpose of browning is 'to form around the piece a sort of armature that prevents the internal juices from escaping too soon, which would cause the meat to be boiled rather than braised.' [These] views are mistaken. Not only does teh notion of 'pores' have no anatomical basis, but measurement shows that the loss of juices actually increases with cooking."
He goes on about this, thoroughly convincing me, at the vary least. Searing does greatly help the texture, appearance and flavour of the meat, and those are good reasons alone to go brown it before progressing.
A challenge in the context of lamb shanks is that the searing process is made difficult by the shape of the cut. It is hard to lay flat on a frying surface, and thus getting a nice browning is made impractical. The blow-torch from my plumbing tools to the rescue - er, I mean my kitchen torch, yeah, my kitchen torch, to the rescue.
Thus browned, I sliced up an onion and threw it in the baking pan, and added a large can of tomatoes (we've just used the last of last summer's home-canned tomatoes that were so great all winter - thanks to @skatem).
In went the aforementioned spices and just a small sprinkle of salt and pepper.
I am keenly aware of the thermal mass challenges in slow cooking - you can waste a lot of time just getting the mass of meat up to cooking temperature, so four minutes in the microwave served to just warm the two large shanks and a small one up somewhat. I also started the oven temperature at 425°F (220°C). Throwing the pan into the chamber of cookage, I lowered it back to 300°F (150°C) after about 10minutes.
Here's a shot of the pan just going in. You can see the onions, prunes, and cranberries. Oh, yeah, I put in some black olives as well, just to keep it well rooted to the edge of the Mediterranean.If you're doing this yourself, just wing it a bit. With oregano and thyme you can bring it around to a bit more of a northern Mediterranean feel probably. I think a key ingredient though is the star anise. It adds a key component to the flavour and for my money enhances the cinnamon taste nicely, and says Morocco.
Meanwhile, lamb working away, I figured two hours should be just enough time to quick cook some dried chick peas to make the cous-cous more authentic. You cover the dried beans well with some salty water and bring them to a hard boil, then turn it off and let them sit for an hour. Then top up the water if necessary and simmer for another hour or so.
In the last ten minutes before everything is ready, do a couple of things. You've been checking the lamb rotating the meat a few times all the way along to ensure it's cooking evenly. Just before it's done, it is split and nearly falling off the bone. Haul up as many tomatoes as you can to sit on top of the meat, and with the lid off, let them cook there a bit. The result is that they dry and even caramelize a bit, approaching the consistency of sun-dried tomatoes. Yum.
The other step is to get about 30% more broth than couscous into an over-sized measuring cup and zap it in the microwave until it boils. Add a bit of olive oil (I used avocado oil for kicks) - add about a tablespoon to the broth. Spoon out drained, cooked chick peas into the broth, then dump in your cous-cous, and cover the cup with plastic (and a towel like a tea-cosy to keep it warm).
Pull out the baking dish, and give it a stir up to mix the now firmer tomatoes back in - it looks something like this.
No, wait a minute, it looks exactly like this.By the way, your house/apartment/yurt smells absolutely spectacular by now as well, and you're really hungry and that bottle of wine you had sitting aside may be suffering depletion.
Your cous-cous should also be ready. But here's a twist.
My partner in crime, kitchen and life in general, @skatem, thought to add something in the green shade, and chose some okra she had picked up the day before. Slicing that up she fried it in butter and olive oil until browned and slightly crispy, and we added that on top of the cous-cous after plating.
The result is this delicious item pictured here. Some stuff to notice, given you can't taste this picture - the chick peas are firm and tasty - I think a step up from the canned ones, but you could probably use them in a pinch. It would save you a bit of time. Perhaps throw them into the broth when you're heating it up, before adding the cous-cous.Note too the fall-off-the-bone tenderness of the lamb. If under-cooked, the shank-meat can be rather tough, so this is a great solution for those cuts of lamb.
I had a bit more sauce with my cous-cous at the end - oh and what the heck, here's another picture from another angle.
I guess I am mostly blogging about this (I have gone on a bit, haven't I?) because it was one of the best things from our kitchen in recent memory.With the meal we had a good solid red wine that complemented it well. It is called "Butcher's Gold," and is a Sangiovese/Shiraz blend that I hadn't tried before. Some nice structured tannins in there that stood up well with the lamb flavours, and the fruitiness you find in a good decent shirazs complement the dried fruit in the dish as well.
We wrapped it all up with a small plate of cheese (extra old cheddar and havarti) and a few grapes.
Then a bit later, a press-pot of Columbian dark roast (tho' decaf) and a pair of dark, dusty cognac truffles. It was after all Easter, and a bit of chocolate was in order given the traditions of the day.
There it all is - a nice weekend meal, and really, the preparation wasn't a huge challenge from an effort point of view, and everything was thrown together without for recipes, just in pursuit of a family of flavours. All the ingredients were things we had on-hand around the house, though the wine, grapes and okra were all fortuitous acquisitions by @skatem leading into this long weekend.
