A recent addition to the kitchen arsenal was a Russell Hobs pressure cooker. It was on special, I’ve always wanted to play with pressure cookers and I had the doe at the time. All the stars aligned. John my butcher didn’t have any Lamb Shanks available so I had to cheat on him with another butcher. I felt so dirty. But a few ‘Frenched’ shanks went in the cooker with a heap of wine, stock, tommies, sage, rosemary, thyme. garlic, carrots etc. I don’t need to outline all the ingredients. If you’ve had a thick sauce gravy style shank you know what the end result would be like. Almost as good as a bottle of Pinot Noir, a shag pile, a warm fireplace and good company. But in this case it wasn’t the shank meal that got me excited, it was the morning after (how many sexual metaphors can I get into this post?).

In the morning the pressure cooker was still full with a thick sauce, almost frozen with the cold winter overnight temperature. For shits and giggles I turned on the gas and reintroduced the sauce to heat. The aroma was intoxicating! As you can imagine it was like a lamb shank meal up the nose. Not wanting to waste this ‘shank’ stock I added Canellini and Borlotti beans and made the best Sunday breakfast. A true peasant style don’t waste any flavor dish.

It tasted like beans and shanks. Which gave me an idea. How about a meal cooked with beans and shanks fo shizzle.