Slow Cooked Goat Shanks: Pt. 3

Colleen’s Ingredients

• Goat shanks 3 – 4

• 1x 400g can diced tomatoes

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• Good splash of Worcester sauce

• Salt and pepper to taste

• About half a teaspoon dried basil

• 1 chicken stock cube in 200mls hot water

• 2 tablespoons cornflour (to thicken sauce)

Graham’s Ingredients

• 4 goat shanks (a lot of feed and meaty Toggenburg genes went into those ones – only needed 4 for 6 adult serves!)
• 250 ml taken from a 500 ml preserving jar of tomato soup (home-grown and homemade)
• 250 ml taken from a 500 ml preserving jar of tomato puree (home-grown and homemade)
• 3 teaspoons crushed garlic (home-grown)
• 6 tablespoons Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce (Is that 6 good splashes?)
• 1 tablespoon Balsamic vinegar
• 1 3/4 cups red wine (Merlot)
• 1 teaspoon Celtic & NZ sea salt (No additives but iodised with NZ deep water kelp.)
• 5 grinds of pepper (from Rubirosa)
• 1 rounded teaspoon dried basil (home-grown)
• 1 heaped teaspoon Marmite
• 3 tablespoons cornflour (to thicken sauce)

Colleen’s Directions

Combine 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 teaspoon minced garlic, Worcester sauce, salt, pepper and dried basil in the slow cooker.

Dissolve 1 chicken stock cube in 200mls hot water and place into slow cooker.

Place goat shanks in and spoon some of the mixture over the shanks.

Cook on Auto for 7 hours.

Remove shanks from slow cooker and place to one side.

Combine 2 tablespoons of cornflour with enough water to make a thin paste and stir into the sauce mix.

Serve with a sweet potato/potato mash and mixed vegetables.

Make sure each plate has a generous serve of the sauce.

Graham’s Directions

Combine tomato soup, tomato puree, Worcester sauce, Balsamic vinegar, red wine, crushed garlic, dried basil, salt and pepper in a large bowl.

Dissolve 1 heaped teaspoon of Marmite in a little hot water and add it to the bowl.

Place goat shanks in a large cast iron casserole dish and pour the combined ingredients over them.

Cook in the woodstove’s cast iron oven overnight. Keep at 150 – 160 Celsius for two to three hours before you go to bed. Get up at 2 am, go for a wee, revive the fire and refill the firebox with wood, keeping the woodstove’s air vent at a narrow setting. (See Slow Cooked Goat Shanks: Pt. 2 .)

Remove casserole dish from the oven when you get up next morning.

Reheat in preparation for serving for another hour and a half at 150 – 160 Celsius.

Remove the shanks and keep hot on a dish in the oven.

Combine 3 tablespoons cornflour with enough water to make a thin paste and stir into the sauce mix.

Serve with mashed potatoes, steamed carrots and broad beans.

Make sure each plate has a generous serve of the sauce.

---

The slow cook and the sauce were always going to make or break this meal. Any cook of note will tell you to get a spoon and taste the sauce as it cooks. Too bland, add a little salt, Worcester sauce and, perhaps, wine; too sweet, add something acidic like vinegar or lemon; too thin, thicken with more cornflour.

Persevere with the taste test, add a smidgen of this and a touch of that and hope it’s a better sauce after all that fuss. I’d observe how Ali, my son-in-law and now a trainee chef, would add a dash of this herb, a sprinkle of that spice, a splash of lemon juice; a taste, a little more of this and that, a taste, a taste, until his tastebuds told him he’d discovered what he was hoping for all along.

Me? There’s no sampling – I just hope for the best! But I do have some idea of the flavour and texture because I’ve used most of the ingredients in similar combinations before.

Did my fellow diners enjoy the meal?

I knew Karen liked lamb shanks because a couple of times when we’d dined out with her that had been her main course. And going by her conversation as I dished out the meal, she had cooked up shanks (in her case, lamb), at least as many times as I had. Skin in the game!

One and three quarter cups of Merlot. It seemed a lot, but that’s what was left in the bottle I’d opened a couple of days previous and it seemed silly to leave a piddly amount when it just might add that little extra “je ne sais quoi” to the sauce. “Too much?”

Fine by Karen. Last time she’d sloshed in two cups of Merlot. And made it with Shiraz added before that: “A bit harsh,” she said.

Sugar and sugary ingredients get cut right back most times I follow a recipe, but I tend to be downright exuberant in my extravagant use of several other ingredients. Have I killed the thing with too much of several good things?

Anxious moments as June, Karen and their mum took their first mouthfuls. Perhaps they’ll gag on the heaven knows what they’re tasting slurry of tomato soup, Worcester sauce, Marmite and vinegar flavours?

“Balanced, smooth.” Karen’s talking about the sauce – not the Cab Sav she’d brought along to go with it!

Joyce and June murmured appreciative agreement. “And the meat’s so tender,” June added.

Karen ladled on a second generous helping of the sauce. All plates at the finish satisfyingly emptied of mashed potato, steamed carrots, broad beans, goat meat and sauce.

“You’ll have to make that again,” June said.

“Yeah, I will, won’t I,” I said.