Slow cooked spiced lamb shanks with cheesy polenta

This is one of my favourite meals at the moment – the meat falls apart off the bone and the polenta is lovely and creamy and nourishing, and certainly makes a nice change from mashed potato. 🙂

It’s cooked in 2 parts. Firstly, the shanks.

In a slow cooker place:

• 3 lamb shanks
• 2 tins of diced tomatoes
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 carrots, diced
• 1 onion, diced in chunks
• 3 sprigs of thyme (run your fingers down the end to tip of the  sprigs and get the leaves off that way)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp garam marsala
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• splash of white wine
• salt and pepper to season

1. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

1/2 hour before serving, make your polenta.

To do this:

1. Add 1 cup of polenta to a saucepan
2. To this slowly add 2 cups of milk and 1/4 cup of water, and about 1/4 of grated parmesan cheese.
3. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly. When it has come to the boil, turn the heat down to low and simmer stirring all the time while it thickens and is soft when tested (with a spoon, obviously, not your finger 😉 ).
4. Let the polenta rest for a few minutes so it goes into more of a solid form before you add some to a bowl and then top with some of your mouth watering lamb shanks.

Enjoy! Please leave a comment with your feedback – I love hearing from my readers!