A Cherry Good Tree – Braised Lamb Shanks with Cherry Sauce
HAPPY (belated) CANADA DAY!! What a beautiful long weekend we’ve had to celebrate our home and native land. I think it’s going to be a pretty spectacular summer!
In honour of this good earth we call home, I thought I’d share some of her harvest from our own back yard. We bought this little home of ours 4 years ago this coming September. We were motivated to move to this part of Oakville in large part because of the mature trees. As it turns out, this particular neighborhood was once an orchard. Apples and pears (the Cockney slang for “stairs,” though in this case I’m referring to the actual fruit) can be found scattered on lovely old trees in backyards for blocks. As luck (or grace) would have it, our particular yard is home – not to a crab apple or gnarly pear tree – but to one very large, very lovely cherry tree. Being the arborists (read: neohphytes) that we are, we did not realize we had this treasure in our literal backyard until our first Spring in this home when our tree came into breath-taking full bloom.
Gorgeous, black, ripe and juicy Bing Cherries are truly one of my all-time favourite Canadian delights, so we were pretty much beyond ourselves when we gathered our first harvest that Spring. Last year, we had our first year of blooms with no fruit (still not sure what happened), but this year the harvest was SPECTACULAR. Truly the best yet. I think we may have picked as much as 10 pounds of cherries from our very own backyard. Pretty terrific if you ask me. Here’s a shot of just one of the several bowls we filled with this early summer’s harvest:
In addition to gorging ourselves on this ruby goodness straight from the tree, the abundance of fruit inspired an abundance of cheesy puns: “What a cherry good tree!” “I love you cherry much,” “This was a cherry good meal,” “See you cherry soon!” etc. Basically think of any opportunity you can imagine to swap out “cherry” for “very” and we took it. I blame it on being drunk on these Bing Beauties. Cheese and cherries go well together, right?
Once I recovered from OD-ing on groan-worthy puns and freshly picked cherries, I decided that this was the year to work on some new recipes to make the most of this delectable fruit. So, inspired by the lamb shanks I had at 1000 Tastes of Toronto, I created today’s recipe for some truly inspiring and heartwarming friends who came to visit us last weekend. The verdict was that it was cherry, cherry good. (Sorry…had to squeeze in one more pun to round out the cheese plate.)
BRAISED LAMB SHANKS WITH CANADIAN BING CHERRY SAUCE
Ingredients:
12 lamb shanks
flour for dusting
salt + pepper
2 Tbsp Grapeseed Oil for braising
2 large Vidalia onions, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
A handful of fresh rosemary
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
6 oz good Balsamic Vinegar de Modena
10 oz good red wine (I like a nice Australian Shiraz for this one)
1/2 pound or more of Organic Canadian Bing Cherries, pitted + halved
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 300° F. Season the shanks with salt + pepper on both sides and then dust with flour.
Heat grapeseed oil on high heat and add lamb shanks to braise on both sides (2 mins or less per side).
{A quick aside: I use grapeseed oil rather than olive oil for braising. It is considered one of the “good fats” as it has a high concentration of unsaturated fat, is low in saturated fat and is cholesterol-free just like olive oil, but it has a much higher flashpoint. This means that it doesn’t start smoking until 419° F (i.e. SMOKIN’ hot) and doesn’t absorb into the food as much, thus not changing the flavour and also reducing the fat absorbed into the dish. In simple terms: it’s the healthiest choice for frying and it works really well. I love a good extra virgin olive oil for salad dressings, but I always stick with grapeseed oil for frying, braising and sautéing.}
Once you’ve braised the lamb shanks, they should look something like this:
Remove the shanks and add the chopped onion and carrots. Cook 10-15 mins on med-high heat until the onions have softened and are translucent. Add the rosemary and crushed garlic and cook for a few more mins. (I left the rosemary on the stalks and just removed the stalks from the sauce after I pulled everything out of the oven – easy peasy once it’s cooked). Add the balsamic vinegar and the wine and bring to a simmer to reduce. Pour the sauce into your roasting dish and add back the lamb shanks, layering them so they look something like this:
Cover with parchment paper and place the lid on the roasting pan. Roast in the oven for 2-3 hours at 300° F. Remove from oven and transfer shanks to a serving plate. Cover with tinfoil to keep warm and let rest. Meanwhile, transfer the sauce of onions, carrots, balsamic and wine to a sauté pan and add the cherries. Sauté on high heat for 2-3 mins until the cherries have softened a bit but still retain their shape and some of their firmness.
Serve with Cauliflower Purée (recipe to come) and steamed French Green Beans. Plate by serving the Cauliflower and green beans and then creating a bed of the cherry sauce and finishing with the braised lamb shanks. The meat fairly falls off the bone, and the slightly tart sweetness of the cherries is the perfect compliment to the earthy goodness of the lamb. Dee-LISH!!
Hope you’ve all savoured a great weekend and – for those of you north of the border – I hope you’ve taken time to celebrate all the best of what it means to be Canadian! More cherry goodness to come in the days ahead… Happy Monday!
xo
s.
