Minnesota's Holiday Baking Traditions Chronicled in Cookbooks

Braised Lamb Shank

Braised lamb shanks represent the ultimate in simple, country comfort, and they're a great addition to your home-kitchen repertoire. I honed my recipe for the opening of the Blue Door restaurant at the Delano Hotel, Miami Beach, in 1995. But the idea was planted years ago when I had gigot à sept heurs ("seven-hour-lamb") in France; it was so tender that they served it without a knife.

The crucial flavor-building step here is to create a spice rub and allow the lamb to marinate well in advance. The rest of the procedure involves straightforward braising: it takes a long time, but once you've put the pan in the oven, you leave it alone and you can go about your other business. (In fact, it's best not to disturb the shanks much at all.) Once you've reduced the braising liquid to a sauce - another simple procedure that leaves you free to make other preparations  the meal is ready to serve. Like most braised or stewed meat dishes, this one actually improves if left in the fridge for a day or two and served reheated. Be sure to wash it down with a bottle of hearty Rhône red or some equivalent wine.

Ingredients

3 tbsp ground cumin

3 tbsp ground coriander

2 tbsp Madras curry powder

2 tbsp minced fresh rosemary

2 tbsp minced fresh thyme

2 tbsp minced garlic (2 large cloves)

1 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper, plus more to taste

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbsp kosher salt

6 lamb shanks (1 to 1 1/4 pounds each), trimmed excess fat

2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped

1 large yellow onion, coarsely chopped

1 cup dry white wine

2 quart chicken stock, low-sodium canned

Directions

Marinate the Lamb Shanks Place the cumin, coriander, curry powder, rosemary, thyme, garlic, and pepper in a small mixing bowl, and stir to combine well. Stir in 6 tablespoons of the oil to make a paste. Season the paste with 1 tablespoon salt. Run the lamb shanks with the spice rub, place them in a dish, and cover with plastic wrap (or in a large resealable plastic bag), and refrigerate overnight.

Brown and Braise the Lamb Shanks: Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Wipe the paste from the shanks with a paper towel and discard. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. (Choose a pan that is large enought to hold the shanks in a single snug layer, or use a separate large roasting pan for braising.) Working in batches is necessary, brown the shanks on all sides, about 20 minutes. Wipe out the skillet. (It is important to discard any burned spices.) Add the remaining two tablespoons of oil with the celery, onion, carrot, and cook over medium heat until the vegetables begin to soften and brown, about 12 minutes. Return the shanks to the pan, add the wine, and simmer until the pan is almost dry, about 8 minutes. Add the stock and bring to a simmer until the pan is almost dry, about 8 minutes. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Cover the pan and place it in the oven to braise for 1 hour. (If using a separate roasting pan, transfer all contents before placing in oven.) Turn the shanks and cook until the lamb is very tender,about 1 more hour. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the shank to cool in their cooking liquid.

Transfer the shanks to a plate or bowl and pass the braising liquid through a strainer into a saucepan. Discard the solids. Bring the braising liquid to a simmer over medium-high heat. Skim the fat as it rises. (Alternatively, chill the sauce so the fat hardens on top and can be removed.) Reduce the braising liquid to about two cups of sauce, approximately 15 minutes. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Return the shanks to the cooking pan. Pour the sauce over the shanks and reheat in the oven, basting with sauce frequently. Serve the shanks on a platter or in large bowls topped with sauce.

Lamb Shanks

1 Tbsp Oil ¼ cup Seasoned flour, for dusting 4 Lamb shanks (Main) 1 Onion, chopped roughly 3 cloves Garlic, crushed 1 Tbsp Freshly grated ginger 1 tsp Cumin 1 tsp Cinnamon 1 tsp Turmeric ½ tsp Nutmeg 1 Tbsp Brown sugar 1 tin Chopped tomatoes, approx. 400g 2 cups Yams 1 tin Lentils, approx. 420g, drained and rinsed 1 cup Beef stock, or chicken stock 1 sprinkle Fresh coriander, to garnish 4 cups Couscous, soaked, to serve

It Will Take Way More Than Lamb Shanks To Fix Our Fragmented Nation

Disunity, alas, has been the direction of travel for years, and new faultlines have opened up. The housing affordability crisis is often cast in generational terms, as a fight between cashed-up Boomers, with their portfolios of investment properties, and cash-strapped younger Australians burdened with crushing rents. It was brilliantly parodied in the annual Australian lamb advertisement, "The Generation Gap", which cast Boomers, Millennials and members of Gen Z as warring tribes. The ad was the brainchild of creative agency The Monkeys, which knows a thing or two about disunion. In the run-up to the referendum, it also produced the "You're the Voice" advertisement, which showed that not even a singer with the convening power of Farnsie could bring the country together.

In the Voice referendum, voting intentions were heavily influenced by the "four Gs" – gender, generation, graduation and geography – according to researchers at the ANU. The yes vote was obviously strongest in the inner suburbs, and the feeblest among regional and rural voters, reinforcing the longstanding city/country schism. The referendum also exposed an educational divide, although even to whisper of its existence runs the risk of sounding condescending and elitist, and thus widening the rift.

Two woke for their own good? Australia's captain, Pat Cummins, and Usman Khawaja have answered their critics with a succession of sporting triumphs. Credit: AP/Tertius Pickard

After the ACT became the only territory or state to vote yes, the nation's bush capital also became easier to stereotype as an outlier: a progressive haven overly populated by left-wing public servants and journalists out of touch with mainstream Australians.

When it comes to national unity, Australia is still suffering from "long COVID": the persisting effects of Fortress Western Australia, Fortress South Australia and Fortress Queensland. As the country turned into a patchwork of wary jurisdictions, state premiers trumpeted their separatism and sometimes sounded like the heads of splinter movements. "We will be turning Western Australia into its own island, within an island," pronounced the state's Labor premier, Mark McGowan. "Our own country." In a state where secessionist sentiment is as much a part of the bedrock as iron ore, this was gold for many West Australians. After winning the next state election in a landslide, McGowan retired from office a state, if not a national, hero.

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Queensland's recently departed premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, benefited from a similar phenomenon. She became Australia's most electorally successful female party leader partly because of her state-centric stewardship during COVID-19, and her ability to tap into that sense of Sunshine State exceptionalism.

The pandemic, I suspect, has also had a lasting effect on Australia's global community, that rolling diaspora of expats who leave and then often return, who were cut off from their homeland because of severe travel restrictions. For many who still call Australia home but who choose to live overseas, that sense of estrangement has clearly been exacerbated by the outcome of the Voice referendum, and the shame they felt afterwards.

The cumulative effect of those two nation-splitting events is striking. In just three years, Australia has been hit by a double-whammy of disunion: a divisive referendum and an isolating pandemic.

Australia is not America. It does not suffer from the same extreme polarisation. Nowhere near. Nor is it post-Brexit Britain, where nationalists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are agitating for the break-up of the union. To cast an eye over the political map of Australia is to see an entire continent coloured ALP red, with Tasmania the only state without a Labor premier.

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Political dominance, however, is a very different thing from political harmony. Indeed, one-party pre-eminence can fuel the kind of grievance politics that has become Peter Dutton's political business model, what with his declaration of war on Woolies and flag-waving ahead of Australia Day. It is a politics that seeks deliberately to divide the country in the hope of picking up the election-winning half.

Perhaps in these polarised times a genuine sense of togetherness is unattainable, and something we will only experience in sporadic bursts: during moments of national horror, such as the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, and national ecstasy, such as the march of the Matildas, whose success during last year's Women's World Cup neutered critics who initially bemoaned their demands for equal pay and eyed them as potential cannon fodder in the culture wars. Certainly, on January 26, I never expect to experience the same sense of kinship and cohesion that Sam Kerr and her team inspired, for this is a nation bisected by its national day.

Nick Bryant is the author of The Rise and Fall of Australia: How a Great Nation Lost its Way.

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