Our Daily Bread

Today’s menu:

Breakfast – Yogurt

Lunch – Chilli Prawn Noodle Salad (HM)

Eve Meal – Braised Lamb Shanks with tomato, New Potatoes, Carrots, Cauliflower and Cabbage.

I though I’d post a couple of recipes today, the recipe for my everyday bread and the lamb shank recipe I cooked in the slow cooker last night.

I choose to make my own bread because I so dislike bread made by the Chorleywood process which to me has no substance, is full of things you don’t need and really bears no resemblance to the bread I remember from my childhood. I have tried a bread maker but didn’t really get on with it, it just all seemed too much of a faf if you know what I mean. You seem to wait an age and eventually get a tiny loaf with a hole in the bottom! Yes I know modern bread makers are much better now, but to be honest since adopting a no knead method based on the Doris Grant loaf, it only takes about 2-3 minutes of my time to make a loaf of bread. Doris Grant by the way was a lady who “invented” an easy to make loaf for everyday in order to encourage healthier eating.

Easy Peasy Everyday Bread
1lb Wholemeal Flour
1tsp Easy Blend Yeast
1tsp Salt
8 floz cold water mixed with 7 fl oz boiling water.

Tip the flour into a bowl; add the yeast and salt, mix. Pour in all the water and stir in with a wooden spoon. The dough will be quite loose and sloppy. Put the dough into a greased 1lb loaf tin, smoothing the top. Leave somewhere warmish until the dough rises to the top of the tin. Bake at 200C for 20-30 minutes until browned and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. I usually remove the loaf from the tin for the last 5 minutes of cooking just to brown it all over.

Don’t expect this loaf to be anything like the light fluffy bought bread you may be used to, it does produce quite a dense loaf, but it is a delicious loaf well worth the eating.

Braised Lamb Shanks with Tomato

I got my Lamb Shanks from Broom House Farm near Durham. It is an organic farm with its own butchery and I have to say I am never disappointed with the meat from there. The shanks I used are shoulder shanks and therefore cheaper than leg shanks, I paid a total of £5.83 for three of them, so that’s just under £2 each, not at all bad for organic meat.

Lamb shoulder shanks (I used 1 per person ‘cos we’re a greedy bunch! but if you took the meat off the bone before adding it back to the sauce, you could easily get away with 1 between two or even 3 people)
2 cloves of garlic – chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
¼ lemon chopped into 2 pieces
Sprig of lemon thyme
5-6 sprigs of fresh oregano (you could use dried herbs just as well, but I have these growing in my tiny front garden)
Glug of red wine.

Strip the leaves of the oregano if using fresh and discard the stalks, then chuck everything into the slow cooker and cook on high for approx 4 hours. I did this last night as I know that lamb tends to give off quite a bit of fat – so – remove the shanks and once cool keep them covered in the refrigerator. Let the sauce go cold and then remove the layer of fat from the surface and discard. When you are ready to reheat, add the shanks back into the sauce and reheat in a covered casserole dish in the oven or microwave till piping hot.