Unlikely Words

As the leaves begin to turn, and the temperatures start to fall, a young man’s thoughts turn to stew. Is there anything more comforting and warming than a good hearty stew? Quite possibly the best meal my mom made for us as kids (or at least the one I looked forward to most) was her beef stew; mine has never quite come close. On the other hand, I make a pretty mean lamb stew.

Somewhere between home and the store to buy the lamb stew ingredients, however, I got an idea. It’s weird, but sometimes I get a craving not for a particular ingredient, but for a cooking method. Ever since the Harvest Postluck and Ken’s braised beef I wanted to fire up my own dutch oven, so I figured I could make some kind of a hybrid: braised lamb shanks with stewed vegetables. Or something.

Check out the ingredients, in proud array:

I ended up using 2 medium onions, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, 2 medium sweet potatoes, a handful (maybe 6-8?) new potatoes, 2 carrots, a red and a green bell pepper (plus some other little random bell peppers from our CSA), 3 green onions, and a bunch of flat leaf parslet.

For seasoning, a tablespoon of curry powder, a tablespoon of dried oregano, and a half-teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

Once diced and chopped, it looked like this:

Oh, yeah. Lamb. Gonna need some lamb. I got 4 lamb shanks …

… and seared them (in two batches) in my big ol’ dutch oven with just a tablespoon or so of oil.

While the lamb enjoyed a well-deserved rest, I heated another couple tablespoons of olive oil in the dutch oven, and added the curry powder and oregano. The spices get a chance to bloom a bit in the hot oil, and it makes the kitchen smell darned good. Once the spices opened up, I added the onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and stirred things around until everything was heated through and the onions started to take on a little color.

Then it was time for the braise. Two 20-oz cans of diced tomatoes went into the pot, and as it heated up, I nestled the lamb snugly in the liquid.

I turned the heat up to a fairly aggressive simmer and let the longer-cooking ingredients get a 5 or 10 minute head start. Then I stirred in the peppers, turned the heat down to a low simmer, covered the pot, and let it ride for at least an hour.

Things smelled good. They smelled very good. When it was finally time to eat, I evacuated all (ok, most) of the solids: the lamb to one bowl and the veggies to another.

I added the sliced scallions to the remaining liquid, and cranked up the heat to thicken and reduce the sauce. This liquid, folks, let me tell you, is pure concentrated delicious-ness.

Anyway, I served it with some simply prepared couscous. Just a lamb shank on each plate with a generous spoonful of the vegetables, and then a healthy dose of the reduced sauce over top of it.

I thought this was a pretty delicious meal. It was pretty damn hearty, if you know what I mean. I probably wouldn’t want to eat it on a nice summer day, but when it’s raining and cold, it’ll hit the spot.

(Oh, and here’s the best part: after we ate, I pulled the meat off of the other two bones, chopped it up a bit, and tossed the meat and all of the veggies back into the pot: voila! Lamb stew leftovers.)

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