Rosemary, shanks for the lamb.

Hi All and Eric

Hope you all had a pleasant week and are counting the days down until Christmas. I think their are 22 to go.

Bonnie, my Sister-In-Law will be arriving from Doha, Qatar shortly to join us for the festive season and looks like the Ferreira's will also witness the might of the Van Der Merwe ladies culinary skills for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I took Rhys up with me to Joburg on Wednesday to have a bit of a visit with his cousin's, Petri and Christi. I was on a course with Nicky the Thursday. I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN GAUTENG, it takes forever to get somewhere and even longer to get back. That is were we are spoilt by living in a relatively small town. 10 minutes to work MAX.

Anyway as you can see by the title I am going to give you a great lamb shank recipe courtesy of my friends at Avocado. Have a bit of a hectic golf week ahead of me which strangely enough I am trying wickle my way out the Sunday game, because they want me to Captain the side and also arrange the four-balls etc. I have to rewrite my exam on the 11th, next Tuesday, yes if you must know I mucked the first one up,OK.

Till we blog again, HAVE A GOOD ONE.

LAMB SHANKS

Ingredients:

6 lamb shanks
8-10 small pickling onions
3 carrots, thickly sliced
250ml red wine
3 bay leaves
2 mutton stock cubes
1 tomato stock cube
15ml soy sauce
15ml chutney

Method:

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius. In a large roasting dish, arrange the lamb shanks to fit. Scatter the pickling onions and sliced carrots over them.

In a large jug, mix the red wine, bay leaves, stock cubes, soy sauce, chutney and 500ml water. Pour this mixture over the lamb shanks. Add more water to half cover them if necessary.

Top with 4 or 5 fresh twigs of Rosemary, cover with lid or tinfoil and cook in the oven for 4 hours.

Remove the lid/tinfoil and allow the sauce to reduce and thicken for another 20 minutes or so.

Serve hot with mash and green beans.