The Shanking of the Lambs

Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise

After the blowout tapas dinner party, Jim was spent but he had promised to cook Peta a great lamb shanks meal. He had cooked it for his friends Amelia and Malinda who liked it enough to bail on going out for Peruvian food and then for his mom and dad. Even Jim Sr., the picky eater that he is, liked it.

This recipe takes a loooong time to cook and we did it on the stove top rather than in the oven. It can also be difficult to find the shanks, but the unctuousness in the final sauce is worth the hunt. Take your butcher up on any offer to crack the shanks.

The only problem with the meal was one of the ingredents. The leeks looked "funny". Does that mean "woody". We're not sure. But the texture of the cooked leeks was all wrong, so we ended up picked them out. We put some in the freezer and will be eating leftover for a while...

Jim and Peta

PS: We'll blog about the party soon. We swear it!!

The First Bounty of Spring

We've finally gotten something other than kale, chard, fava beans and cabbage and this time it come from our garden at home, not the Stanford Organic Farm! It was... wait for it... RADISHES! OK, you can put away the trumpets. Boring, right?

Radishes are always so easy to grow, so fast (24 days) and so different from the winter veggies that you have to plant them. But then, once you harvest them, what do you do with them? Well, here's a recipe, Radishes with Radish Greens and Parmesan over Pasta, that's pretty tasty. Just scroll right past those other, horrid recipes to get this one.

Did we add a Portobello mushroom to this recipe? Oh, yes.
Did we add a bit of ham? Of course we did!
Did we add a bit more parmesan than the recipe called for? Slap the 'cuffs on us. Guilty as charged.

But did we eat through our 14 radishes? Damn skippy.

Jim and Peta