I had never made lamb of any sort before this dish.  It felt a little exotic and intimidating, not to mention that you don’t really find it in the supermarket (we bought the lamb at the St Paul Farmer’s Market in case you were wondering).  However, this couldn’t really be any simpler and it made me want to be a French shepherd.

The meat will be fall off the bone tender and the lentils will be flavorful and delicious with the juices, wine, and stock.

Below is what the recipe called for, but we only had two shanks and upped the lentils to 1 lbs and the liquid accordingly to cook them.

• .75 lbs ‘French’ lentils (the greenish brown ones)
• 2 carrots chopped
• 1 large onion chopped
• 3 ribs of celery chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 tsp of dried
• 400 mL of red wine
• 400 mL of chicken stock
• 4 lamb shanks
• Salt
• Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Heat the first 9 ingredients in a dutch oven or other heavy oven safe pot on the stove over high heat until boiling.
2. Nestle the lamb shanks into the lentil and veg and cover.   Turn the over to 375 and put the pot in for 1 hour.
3. Take the pot out and gently stir everything around.  Add salt and pepper to taste at this time.  If the mixture is starting to dry out, add some more stock or water.  You don’t want a soup, but you need it to be quite moist to taste good and cook properly.  Re-cover and put back in the oven for 1 hour.
4. If  meat is done, that is super tender falling off the bone done, crank up to 400 degrees and cook uncovered for 20 minutes to brown the meat a bit.
5. Season as needed and enjoy.