Fancy enough for company and yet easy enough for every day, this recipe will leave you with melt in your mouth, fall-off-the-bone lamb and a flavourful sauce to spoon over garlic mashed potatoes or noodles. Using a slow cooker makes this an easy-to-put-together impressive dinner, but also frees you up to tidy the house and go about your day. Still comforting enough for every day, we enjoyed it for Sunday dinner with crusty bread to sop up the sauce and a tossed green salad.
Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup peeled, seeded, and chopped tomatoes
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry red wine
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
4 lamb shanks, trimmed of the external fat
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil
Put the onion, celery, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, chicken stock, bay leaf, thyme, and tomato paste in the slow cooker. Give it a stir.
Trim the lamb shanks of visable fat and season them with salt and pepper. In a large frypan over medium high heat, saute the shanks on all sides until browned. Add them to the slowcooker. Pour the red wine into the pan, stirring up all the browned bits from the lamb off the bottom. Add the wine to the slowcooker as well.
Cook the lamb shanks for six hours. When they are tender and the meat is falling off the bone, remove the shanks from the slowcooker and set aside on a plate. Using an immersion hand blender, puree the remaining sauce until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve each person a lamb shank over mashed potatoes with the sauce spooned over top.
Serves 4
Adapted from Williams - Sonoma
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