Braised Lamb Shanks

It was raining all day today so I decided to stay in and cook Braised Lamb Shanks... I got the idea from Helen Graves' Food Stories and the lamb shanks from Mission Meat Market. Of course, I made some changes to the recipe:

• Asked the nice butcher at the market to cut each of lamb shank to 3 big chunks so I could easily handled them.
• Marinated the shanks overnight with a mix of coriander, fennel, sweet paprika, chayenne pepper, nutmeg, black pepper and salt.
• Had two sets of vegetables – one consisted of big chunks of vegetables (carrot, onion, leeks) that I browned, set aside and put back into the pot in the last 30 minutes of cooking and the other consisted of chopped vegetables which I used to enrich the broth while cooking the shanks.
• Added currants and orange zests to the couscous.

In addition to the lamb shanks, I baked Oatmeal Cookies with freshly grated nutmeg, orange zest, currants and dried cranberries.


I don't mean to brag but I think I'm a pretty darn good cook – both the lamb shanks and the cookies turned out really well. Let's put it this way, I even forgot to pour myself a glass of wine (Argiolas Perdera's 2006 Italian red wine purchased from Biondivino) because I could not wait to eat. I didn't remember the wine until my second plate. Of course, I totally 'shuffled' in my food... whoops!

End of the night update: Total intake... two plates of lamb shanks & couscous and three cookies. Boy, I hope that I will get a bonus this year because I really need to join the gym.