Moroccan Lamb Shanks
Submitted by Claire Preen
About the cook: A foodaholic, who loves to create new recipes. I've travelled the world learning and enjoying new food and tastes. My favorite cuisines being NorthAfrican/Middle Eastern and Asian food
About the dish: Heartwarming, soul lifting comfort food at its best, with the exotic flavours of Morocco. A perfect dish to prepare at the weekend, and serve up (amidst great applause and fanfare!) in the middle of the week. If you don’t want to use (or don’t have) dried chickpeas, you can use the tinned variety instead. Just open the tin, rinse and add them at the same time you add the shanks to the stock when warming them up at the ready to serve stage. Chickpeas are tasty little nutrient packed gems and accompany these shanks perfectly.
National Origin: Moroccan
Serves: 4
Estimated Time: Over 2 Hours
Ingredients:
4 lamb shanks
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp cinammon
½ tbsp chili flakes
1 onion, diced
1 lt of chicken stock
1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp flour for roux
1 cup of chopped apricots
1tbsp toasted pine nuts
1/2red onion chopped
Cilantro
Salt and Pepper
Flour
2 tbsp oil
4 cups of soaked chickpeas
Preparation:
Oven 175F
Season lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Dust with flour
Heat 1 tbsp oil in fry pan and add the cumin, cinammon and chili
Add the diced onions and saute on low temperatrure for about 15 minutes until onions are soft
Tip the onions into a casserole dish and add the other tbsp of oil to the same pan and heat
Place the lamb shanks in the fry pan and brown on all sides (about 10minutes)
Place the lamb shanks in with the onions. Add the chopped apricots.
Cover the shanks with the stock and cover the casserole dish with aluminium foil
Cook in the oven for 18-24 hours until the lamb is falling off the bone. 3 hours before taking the lamb out the oven, add the chickpeas.
Take the lamb shanks out the stock and place both stock (with the chickpeas in) and lamb in fridge.
Allow stock to cool and then skim off the fat from the top.
All of above can be done 1-2 days in advance. When ready to serve
Make the roux, by melting the tbsp of butter in a pan, and stirring in the flour.
Add stock to pan, heat and whisk in the roux to thicken it up. Once it’s thickened, turn the temperature down and add the shanks and gently heat through.
Serve the shanks with some toasted pine nuts and raw chopped red onion and a little fresh cilantro.