Lamb shank casserole.

Now I must tell you all that this is not a classically pretty dish to photograph but I can assure everyone that it is very easy to make and tasty to eat on those cold winters nights we are currently getting here in the far south of Western Australia. It is also a meal that needn’t cost the earth to make if you can source some cheap lamb shanks from your butcher or local supermarket. 

The ingredients are purely whatever you have to hand really and these are what I had in my pantry cupboard.

Serves 2

2 lamb shanks

1 tin of tomatoes, 400-440 Gm crushed or diced

1 onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 carrot, roughly chopped

A couple of handfuls of Puy lentils, or others of your liking, even barley will do.

500 ml of good stock, beef, chicken or even vegetable

Plain flour (I used sorghum) salt and pepper to dust the shanks 

2 tablespoons roughly of oil

If you have a handful of dried porcini mushrooms, chuck them in too 😀
Firstly, dust the shanks in the combined seasoned flour then brown in a little oil in a frying pan.

  
Next , place the browned shanks in a heavy based casserole dish or pan. After doing this step,  I like to add the stock and dried mushrooms if I have any to the frying pan to lift up any caramelised bits before I pour this over the top of the lamb shanks.

After putting the lamb shanks in the casserole, place all the other ingredients on top.

  
  
Now all you have to do is cover the dish with either the lid or a good layer of foil/baking paper and place in a preheated 160-170 degree Celsius oven for 2 -2 1/2 hours. 

  
Serve with mashed potato, rice or like I did, a big baked potato and enjoy the sticky soft lamb and yummy sauce.

  
Bon appetit! 

New year, old things relearned.

Welcome to my blog dear readers 😀

 Welcome to the new year where I’ve already gone back in time by 27-30 years to reacquaint myself with the wonderful art of fruit and food preservation.

My fruit trees have been very proliferative in the last few weeks and I hate to see fruit go to waste. I’ve opened up my good old CWA (Country Womans Association) cookbook and it only took a few moments to remember what I had to do.

Here are my Satsuma plums. Washed , halved and ready to pop into jars. I save every jar that I happen to purchase a foodstuff in for just these moments. They work just as well as preserving jars.

Then I tightly pack the plums into the hot, sterilized jars and pour on the preserving syrup. In this case, its a sugar water syrup made up from 3kg (6lb) of sugar to 4 litres (1 gallon) of water. Place in a pan and heat till boiling and sugar is dissolved, boil for 3 minutes.

Try and release any air bubbles by gently tilting the jar to allow them to rise to the top. Top up jars with syrup and place in your preserving pan of choice. You can buy electric urns which I have used in the past and they are great but don’t despair if you can’t afford one of those. I just use my largest deepest soup pot 🙂

Pour enough cold water in to reach 3/4 of the way up the side of the jars. Place a lid on and bring the heat slowly up to 75 degrees Celsius (165 deg Fahrenheit) using a preserving thermometer. Once it reaches 75 degrees hold at this heat for 10 minutes for plums, 12 minutes for apricots and nectarines. Remove from water bath, wipe down making sure lids are tightly on and leave to cool before storing in a cool dry location, preferably in the dark.

I’ll turn the rest of the plums into jam as I love plum jam.

These are some apricots I bottled earlier.

My fruit trees and berries grew a treat this year and following are a few photos of them.

   

I also made a good deal of chicken stock up from old roast chicken carcasses and my own herbs from the garden.

 

Our resident King George Skink made his presence felt earlier in the week and I managed to get a few photos of him/her before they slid off again.

This will be about all there is for this blog. We are getting a lot of external renovations done to the house in this next month while the sun is shining and I will have lots of photos to share with you all.

Take care.