My first post ever! I’ve been inspired by Rice and Beans and Collard Greens (and checkered napkins as well) decided to start my own blog on one of my favorite subjects: food!

So my first post will be a recipe. This is an experiment, though I don’t think I’ve gone too far outside the box on it.

Let me start by saying that my favorite meat is lamb. My mother used to make lamb chops when I was a kid, just around spring, when my dad could grill it after the long winter of discontent (i.e., no grilled meat). She would serve it with mint jelly and potatoes. I was kind of turned off by the mint jelly, but I did love eating this juicy, slightly charred, and smokey hunk of meat with a little apple cider vinegar. I know, strange, but it had a little sweetness and a kick -much like the mint jelly but in a different way.

So, I bought a couple of lamb shanks a week ago and wanted to use them – this was my first time cooking with lamb. I spent years as a vegetarian during college because it was the hip thing to do, but it sure made late night chicken wing outings a pain in the butt. So, I’m recovering from the sins of my youth and venturing out into cooking meat dishes.

I would have gotten lamb chops, and this probably would have been a better idea, but I wanted to start with the shanks because I figured that they might be less fatty (I have no way of judging this, so I don’t know what kind of crazy criteria I was cooking up in my brain). The shanks were a solid pound, and when I bought them I thought I’d been in for a meal of massive lamb chunks.

I must say, I was disappointed. Not in the shanks – I’m sure they are standard, but in myself for buying meat without knowing what I was getting ( I guess I figured I was getting a good deal; they were only $5 and change). I did this a few months ago with some goat at a local halal meats market – that’s a long story that I probably shouldn’t get into. But as I was frying the shanks in my iron skillet I found that not much meat was coming off the bone. It was enough for my dish, but I guess I was expecting more.

Anyway, I used a crockpot for this recipe, as I usually do for curry dishes. Here’s the recipe

Lentil and Lamb Curry
3-4 Servings
Prep Time:  30 minutes labor, 4 hours of crock power
Approximate cost (in Buffalo): $8-9 dollars

2 Lamb Shanks (or 1 – 2 lamb chops, depending on how you like you meat:lentil ratio)
2 cups of lentils
16 oz can of whole, peeled tomatoes
4 cups of water
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic
1/3 cup of canola oil
1/3 cup of brown sugar
1/3 cup of curry powder* (more if you like it spicier, less if you like it more mild)
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (optional, but a hold over from my youth)
a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
* I use a curry powder that I buy in bulk from a local italian market. It’s pretty good but I don’t think it’s your standard curry powder; so whatever you use for your own curry powder spices and however much you use, apply it here for this curry. Also, feel free to substitute the oil with ghee if you prefer; I don’t use ghee because I still feel a bit nervous about it - warm butter and all (and it is expensive!).

Start by boiling four cups of water and adding the lentils. Let the lentils boil for 10 minutes.

Then add lentils and water with the can of tomatoes to the crock pot and turn it on high. With just a drizzle of canola oil, fry the lamb shanks. Cut off the meat as it is cooking if you want this process to go faster. Cook it until the meat is a little crispy and starting to get charred on the outside. You should probably get about 1/2 pound or a little less of meat from the shanks; using a different cut of lamb is recommended.

After the lamb is cooked, put it in the crock pot and add curry powder, canola oil, brown sugar, and apple cider vinegar. Stir until spices/sugar/lamb is evenly distributed. Then cover and let it sit for 2 1/2 hours.

 After the 2 1/2 hours, crush the three heads of garlic and add them to the pot. Cover for 45 minutes. Then carmelize the onion (I prefer to do this then to just put the onion in the crockpot for several hours) and add it to the pot. Cover for 45 minutes.

Dish out and quickly serve with brown rice, naan, or whole wheat pitas.

NOTE: I apologize for the poor quality picture; i’m doing this with a webcam; upgrades should be forthcoming.

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