Chris's Winter Lamb Shanks

This is an easy winter slow cooker that always gets a great response. The trick is the length of time in the over and the fact that the dates melt into the sauce making a sweet rich base for the sauce.

Ingredients:

• 2 lamb shanks (per person)
• 1 cup of chopped dates
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 onion chopped
• baby fennel - chop bulb
• 400g chopped tomatoes
• 3/4 bottle red wine
• 300g cup mushrooms quartered
• 2 or 3 sweet potato chunks

Method:

• Toss shanks in flour and sear in heavy pan, 1 or 2 at a time so you don't lose heat in the pan
• Sweat onion and garlic in olive oil until transparent
• Add tomato, red wine and dates, bring to boil, reduce to simmer and add fennel
• If you are using a slow cooker, place all the cooked ingredients together and cook for about 3 hours.
• If you are cooking in the oven, add all the cooked ingredients into an oven dish with lid and cook for 3 hours on 150 degrees
• At the end of first cooking add chopped sweet potato and cook for a further hour
• Add mushrooms to the lamb mixture and cook for a final 30 minutes while the potatoes are cooking for the mash
• Then prepare potato mash by boiling potatoes and mashing with parsley, chopped shallots and sour cream

Serve a generous helping of mashed potato with 1 or 2 shanks per person and dollops of sauce and if needing colour add some wilted asian greens in the middle