It was one of those springs we just couldn’t shake. A warmish day yielded to cold and wet the next one, followed by a dry but cloudy day and some wicked Spring winds carried south from the Pacific Ocean’s Alaska-to-California current that cool our usual “sun-kissed valley,” a charming phrase coined by Jack London to describe what is now known as Silicon Valley – where the epic story begins in his book, The Call of the Wild. Whether London was ever in the Santa Clara Valley or not (my guess is he was), he wrote the book while living one valley east of me, in the glorious and stunningly beautiful Valley of the Moon. And that valley is, indeed, sun kissed.
Anyway, “the Spring that wouldn’t quit” drove me to planning a comfort food dish that I hadn’t made all winter, and we had it for Sunday dinner: lamb shanks.
I’ve roasted plenty of shanks in the past, yet I reached out to my good friend on the East Coast, Owen, for any ideas. Owen is a serious home chef, like me, and I trust him implicitly and explicitly with our favorite passion, food. He sent me a clip from Chef John and his site, Food Wishes.
This dish was as easy to make as it was delicious. I usually don’t cook with recipes but I tried to be faithful to this one, and it worked! The meat was fork tender and crazy good! Even non-lamb eaters might like it, though at my age I’m not taking chances (and not wasting one of these hunks of meat on a potential convert).
In a shallow roasting pan (I used my 4-quart Braiser from Le Creuset) lay down a large sheet of foil and put the shanks in, then generously salt both sides and also add black pepper. Roast them first, with nothing else in the pan, at 450 for about 40 minutes, until they are golden brown. The photo here is what happens after step 2, which is to add a dozen or so garlic pieces and fresh rosemary, then double wrap the meat and flavorings in foil and slow roast at 275 for about 3 hours. This is what the shanks looked like after I opened the foil.
Chef John served his shanks over a bowl of bean ragout, though I went with our favorite winter carb, creamy polenta, with steamed broccoli.
We drank a 2022 Petit Verdot, “Fence Line,” from Merriam. It’s in the Russian River Valley AVA, just up the road from where we live.
We still had to wait a couple of weeks until we got consistent California spring weather, yet this meal made the wait a lot more tolerable.