Incredible Baked Lamb Shanks

As a child, she taught me how to make pineapple upsidedown cake and apple pie.  When I wasolder, she demystified the workings of callos and bacalao ala Vizcaina.  Like most cooks of the generation before myparents, she uses no exact measurements or hard-and-fast recipes (except when baking of course…she was a well-accomplished baker in her heyday!).  To learn anything, I had to sit patientlyand listen carefully, asking the right questions lest I end up with a wholepig’s leg in my tiny kitchen (“make sure you see the hoof!”).

These days, she is happy letting others do the cookingfor her most of the time, despite her souped-up kitchen (which C and I lookupon with admiration and envy).  We dineout (she loves swanky French food) or in (she also loves C’s sinigang), andalways have a grand time (if you get her, my grandmother, and their othersister together the stories will floor you, as will the good-natured, though attimes high-octane, teasing).

Another thing she enjoys nowadays is gifting C and I withfood.  The lamb shanks I used here werefrom her.

- Set aside 2 sprigs of rosemary and 4 sage leaves.  Pick the leaves of the rest of the rosemaryand thyme and chop.  Chop the remainingsage leaves as well.  Mix the choppedherbs with the butter.  You canalternately whiz everything together in the food processor.  Season with salt and pepper.  I like to season this until it is just aboveyour usual level of saltiness as you will be spreading this all over the lamband it will get diluted by the wine and vegetables.

- Using a small knife, take one of the lamb shanks andcut between the meat and the bone from the base of the shank upwards.  You want to make a hole big enough to putyour finger in.  Repeat with the othershank.

- Divide the herb butter between the “pockets” you havecut at the base of your shanks, pushing it all the way in.  Rub the remaining butter all over the shanksthemselves.

- Tear off 2 arm-length pieces of foil and fold each inhalf to give you 2 large pieces of double-layer foil.  Divide the garlic and vegetables between the2 pieces of foil.  Lay each shank on eachpile of veg, crack some black pepper over that and another light sprinkling ofsea salt, then top with the extra rosemary and sage.  This is how it will look.

- Carefully pull up the sides of the foil and then pour aswig of wine in each parcel.  Gather foilaround each shank and seal shut making sure they are closed tightly. 

- Arrange the parcels in a baking pan and place in apre-heated 375F oven for 3-3.5 hours or until lamb is very tender.

- You can serve the parcels directly so each person canopen their own serving, or transfer everything into a serving dish making surenot to lose any of the buttery juices!

Yet another recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Cook WithJamie.  If you were to say that I amtotally enamored by this book you would be absolutely right.  Honest, delicious, earthy cooking…and theselamb shanks are a perfect example.  I’vechanged the quantities, as well as the cooking temperature and time, butessentially the method remains the same. And what a method it is!  Thesewere some of the softest shanks that ever came out of my oven.  Wrapping the meat and all the aromatics infoil (and see to it that it’s tightly sealed please!) creates a little steambath that keeps the meat moist and flavorful, and renders it sinuouslypliant.  The lamb ends up soft andsticky, drenched in intensely flavored buttery juices.  I plan to try this using other flavorcombinations as well.

Aside from the gifts of lamb shanks, we have also received slabsof steak, Campbell’s soup, fresh apples and pears, olives, duck confit, littlecans of mandarin oranges packed in syrup, beef ribs cut for kalbi, and rotisseriechicken.  Once she appeared on ourdoorstep with a whole leg of lamb!  Ithink it’s sufficient to say that we love my great-aunt R’s generous, ifsometimes random, care packages. Almost as much as we love her.