Weekend Cooking: Red Wine and Garlic Lamb Shanks

I have actually been making this dish for a few years now. It is one of our favourite meals! After a day out in the cold watching my footy team lose, it was a pleasure to come home and smell this wafting through the house, and even more of a pleasure to eat it!

My main reason for posting this on my blog today is so that I can find it in future. The other day I went into the online account I have at taste.com.au and couldn't find the recipe in my saved cookbooks! Panic!!! This is one of my standard weekend dishes during winter, and I have also been known to dress it up a little with the parsley mixture shown below if I have visitors come around for dinner! I tend not to do the topping if it is just the boy and I!

Here is the original recipe which I originally found here:

2 tsp olive oil
2 tbs plain flour
Salt & freshly ground pepper
4 lamb shanks, trimmed
1 brown onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2/3 cup (160ml) red wine
700ml bottle Italian cooking sauce
600g Sebago (brushed) potatoes, peeled, chopped
1/3 cup (80ml) low-fat milk, warmed
250g green beans
1/3 cup chopped fresh continental parsley
1 lemon, rind finely grated
1 garlic clove, extra, crushed

Heat oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over a medium-high heat. Season flour with salt and pepper then coat lamb in flour, shaking off excess. Add to pan and cook, turning often, for 5-6 minutes or until browned. Remove from pan. Add onion and garlic, and cook for 3-4 minutes until softened slightly.

Increase heat to high and add wine to pan. Cook for 2 minutes. Stir in cooking sauce and bring to a simmer. Add lamb shanks to pan. Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook, covered, for 1-1 1/2 hours or until lamb is very tender. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling water until tender. Drain well, mash and beat in milk. Steam beans. Combine parsley, lemon and extra garlic.

Divide lamb shanks and sauce among serving bowls. Top with parsley mixture. Serve with mashed potato and beans.

To be honest, I have never actually cooked shanks like this. I always cook them in the slow cooker. Some days I brown the meat in the flour mixture as outlined in step 1, but other days, like today, I just throw everything in the bowl and turn it on! 

One day I will play around with the liquid proportions as cooking it in the slow cooker does result in the sauce being quite thin (and lots of it) but it still tastes good, and the mashed potatoes soaks the juices up nicely anyway!

The bonus for this recipe is that it always cooks more than enough and so this quantity of meat and sauce will actually do for at least two days. So Monday night's dinner should be nice and easy really!

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