I am NOT a chicken hawk: mutton shanks

I just wrote about baby chickens, right? Ok, just so you guys don't get the wrong idea... I don't , I really don't.

Oh, never mind. To the point of this: mutton. I buy our lamb from the lovely lady who runs Three Corners Farm, Ms. Karen. She's not at all like Karen on "Will and Grace," although let's face it, the idea of that Karen selling lamb chops is kind of funny. Her lamb is incredibly good. Very sweet, very clean tasting.

Last year, she asked me if I wanted to try some mutton. I did not. I was in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," kind of mode. And Karen left it alone. Until last week.

The weather has been getting cold, and I was feeling in the mood for a braise. So, I stopped by Ms. Karen's stand, looking for lamb shanks. She smiled. "How about trying some mutton shanks?" I thought about it, thought about it and then said "Sure, why not?"

She came back with four MONSTROUS pieces of meat. Folks, I have to say, these could have been props from "The Flintstones." We were talking and she remembered how she had told me, about her lamb "don't stew it as long as you do conventional lamb, it doesn't need it," and she was, of course, right. "Well, Norman, these you CAN stew for four hours or longer."

Indeed, you can. And I did. And the results, honestly, are wonderful. For the recipe that follows, substitute lamb if you just can't find, or can't handle the idea of cooking, mutton, and just cook for a lesser amount of time.

The night before you're going to cook, salt four shanks and put them in your fridge, uncovered, overnight. The day of cooking, chop up two onions. Peel, but leave whole, about six cloves of garlic. You should also consider a few branches of rosemary and some thyme (you can't put enough thyme into this recipe), as essential. A few ribs of celery, chopped, and maybe a carrot.

Preheat your oven to 300, and then get a pot that will be big enough to hold all of the shanks in one layer hot, with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Get the oil REALLY hot, and brown the meat well. This is going to take you between 10 and 15 minutes to do. The oil is going to look BLACK as you finish. You may need to do it in a couple of batches, and that's ok.

Pour off most of the fat, leaving about a tablespoon. Add your vegetables, and some salt, and cook them until they just begin to wilt. Put the lamb on top of the veggies, cover them with chicken stock, cover the pot, and put it in that slow oven and LEAVE IT ALONE for at least two hours for the mutton, an hour for the lamb.

While they are cooking, get a winter squash. I had a kabocha from Nevia, but a small pumpkin, or a butternut squash, or a small hubbard would work. Peel it (no easy feat, let me tell you), seed it, by cutting away the guts (you know what I mean), and add the chunks of squash to the meat, in the last hour or so of cooking.

The meat will either just come off the bones (for mutton), or will fall off (for lamb), and the squash will be nice and tender. It's a good compliment to the stronger tasting lamb. If you can, let the dish sit and refrigerate overnight, and scrape off the accumulated fat at the top.

For reasons I cannot quite fathom, I cannot imagine serving this with anything other than barley, so barley it will be. Maybe you will have a different idea. I think leftovers will probably make a wonderful "ragu" of sorts for pasta, but how about sharing the dish with a friend or two?