Asian Style Braised Lamb Shank

I had three lamb shanks sitting in the freezer like forever ! All the recipes I looked up were leaning towards the European style cooking with red wine or port. The lamb shanks I had were not exactly bursting in the meat department. In fact it had very little meat and I was not too keen to open a bottle of red just to cook some bones.

Trawling the net, I came upon these Asian flavoured lamb shanks. This was more my cup of tea. The flavours were really good and the meat literally fell off the bone.

Ingredients
3 lamb shanks

4 Tbsp soy sauce
150ml water
5 slices ginger
2 star anise
4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp white vinegar or 2 tsp rice vinegar

Method
1. Put all the ingredients except vinegar into the pressure cooker.

2. Pressure cook for 30 minutes or until the meat is tender.

3. With the lid off, boil to reduce and thicken the sauce. Turn the shanks over often. Add vinegar. Season with salt if required.

4. Remove the shanks from the sauce and grill/broil for 5-10 minutes to brown the meat. This process is optional.

5. Pour the sauce over the lamb shanks and serve with rice or noodles.

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Mandarin Whisky Marmalade

Every year our small mandarin trees supply us with just enough fruit to eat but never in excess that we have to think of plan B. This year even though only one of the trees bore fruit, it was a good heavy crop. Time to try our hand at making marmalade.

Mr Redneck is the marmalade eater and he has declared this jam to be 'Good '. Man of few words ! A delicious spread on toast. Love the tang and bitter sweet taste of the marmalade. The mandarins from our tree are seedless and this conserve will set without pectin.

My pantry is bulging at the moment with preserves, relishes, chutneys, jams, jellies all made from homegrown produce squirrelled away to be eaten in the coming months.

Makes 5-6 cups

Ingredients
2kg mandarins
800g-1kg sugar
3 cups water
2 Tbsp whisky/brandy
1 lemon, juice and peel

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