After a few hit and misses with lamb shanks etc, I believe I now have the perfect recipe – and the few times I have cooked it – perfect each time. This is also a “two pot meal” as we have enough sauce left over for a pasta dish the following lunch/dinner.

Lamb shanks with tomato, chilli and honey

• 4-6 lamb shanks
• 1 red capsicum
• 1 yellow capsicum
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 brown onions
• 750mls full bodied red wine (I use shiraz)
• 1 tbspoon cumin seeds
• 1 1/2 tbspoon coriander seeds
• 2 tbspoons olive oil
• 2 red chillies (or sometimes I use crushed chilli from a jar)
• 800grams (2 tins) chopped tomatoes
• 3 tbspoon honey
• 1 tbspoon plain flour

Place lamb in large dish, add chopped capsicum, garlic and onion. Pour over the red wine. Cover and place in fridge (I try to do this for at least two hours).

Place cumin seeds in fry pan and dry roast (no oil), cook for approx 2 minutes they should smell fantastic. Place them in your mortar. Dry roast the coriander seeds and place them in the mortar when done. Now pound them into a powder.

Preheat oven to 180. Take lamb from the fridge lift shanks out of the marinade (keep the liquid). Brown off the shanks in a fry pan. Transfer them once brown to a casserole dish.

Now pour the reserved marinade into the fry pan and simmer for 8 – 10 minutes, add chilli. After the 8 minutes add the tomato and honey and mix in. Simmer for another minute or two. Scatter in the spices and flour, season with salt and pepper.

Add the marinade to the casserole dish, cover with the lid and transfer to the oven for two hours. After two hours transfer the shanks to a warm plate and cover. Place the liquid in a saucepan, let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes to reduce the sauce.

Serve shanks and pour sauce over. I usually serve this with some roast veges.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.