Birthday Dinner

I'm back! And better than ever. Ok that may be an overstatement. But I'm doing well and am putting up a long overdue post. In my defense I did loose my camera which slowed the whole posting business.

Anyhow, for my birthday last week I had family dinner with Chad(cousin), Lindsey (cousin's wife), Kenna (cousin), Evan (cousin's finance), and Mike (good friend from school). The original plan for the evening involved going out, but honestly I am more of a homebody than anything else, as you know Miss Xochi, and I love to cook for people and entertain, so this was the perfect way to celebrate my birthday. It was actually a gift for me to be able to cook and then just relax at home.

When deciding what to make I kept thinking of the Gordon Ramsay lamb shanks that I have posted on here before ( http://amigascucina.blogspot.com/2010/03/braised-lamb-shanks.html ). The sauce haunts my dreams it's so good. So, I made the lamb shanks, mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus, and for dessert drunken bananas. By the end of the meal I was so happy from all the good food vibes and happy family and friends time. I slept so deeply after everyone left, it was incredible.
Pictures from the meal are provided by Lindsey, my cousin's wife. She brought her camera over to take pictures of the food and I'm so glad she did. I LOVE Lindsey! She's the best. We forgot to photograph dessert though. I must had been too blissed-out over the food to remember, plus beer and things were consumed which make me relaxed and more forgetful.

Each of us had a whole shank for ourselves, which means that there was A LOT of food. Out of all of us, only Mike entered the "clean plate club". Everyone else had food left on our plates. That worked out just fine for Ruby though, she loved getting leftovers.

I wish you could have been there Xochi! I kept offering people tastes of the sauce as I was making it. I LOVED it! If I had been by myself I would have been a bit more amorous with the sauce. I think everyone else felt just as passionately as I did about the sauce, although it's hard to imagine someone equaling the intensity of feeling I have about that stuff. I wish I could make lip gloss out of it. *Yum*

So despite the lack of pictures of the final product, I would like to post the instructions for the "Drunken Bananas". It's basically just bananas foster, but I get a little scared/lazy to light it on fire. So it's simple, basic and completely delicious.

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas
2 shots brandy (you can use rum or any other brown alcohol I think, but I had brandy for cooking at my house so I used it)
2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp brown sugar (I didn't use measuring utensils for this, but guessing worked out pretty well).
1 tsp cinnamon

Start by slicing the bananas. Then you melt the butter in a large sauce pan. Add the bananas. Coat the bananas with butter. After the bananas are coated add brown sugar and cinnamon. Add the brandy. Do not pour directly from the bottle to the pan. I guess this is a fire hazard. I just put the alcohol into a shot glass first. Then continue to cook the bananas until the liquid is a sauce-like consistency. This help the dessert from not tasting too much like alcohol and gives all the flavors the chance to saturate each other.

Serve over ice cream and enjoy! I've also found that these bananas make a great filling for crepes. You could even put the ice cream or nutella in the crepe with them, but that might be taking things just a little too far.

Braised Lamb Shanks

This is an adaptation of a Gordon Ramsey recipe (1). I was impressed at how easy it was to make. I thought his recipes would be challenging and involved, but it was just fantastic, not hard. He says that the the shank is one of the easier cuts of lamb to cook and I can attest that this recipe was simple yet SO delicious that I found myself licking the sauce directly from the pan. It is possible that the sauce is the tastiest thing I have ever cooked. And that's saying a lot, because I have definitely cooked some impressive meals.

First you heat some olive oil in a large pan. Then you season the lamb shanks and brown them all over in the oil, then remove from the pan and set aside. This takes about 5-8 minutes per shank. I cook 2 shanks at a time and they turned out just fine.

After browning the shanks add a little olive oil, add the chopped vegetables, garlic, herbs and anise, and cook gently until browned. Pour in the wine and cook until it has reduced down to a syrup. Put the shanks back into the pan and pour on the stock. Season to taste.

Cover the pan and cook gently for 2½-3 hours until the meat is tender and falls off the bone.

About 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time, make the parsnips. Though this recipe is easy to make and yummy to eat, it takes quite a long time. By the end I was hungry and tired and so I decided to opt out of puréeing the parsnips and just sauted them instead. The whole thing was totally worth all the time I put in to it. I did not feel let down, but I do think that next time I will purée the parsnips, just to taste the recipe the way it was conceived.

Melt the butter in a frying pan over a low heat and cook the parsnips until completely soft and falling apart (about 25 minutes).

Remove the lamb shanks from the liquid and put in the oven to keep warm.

Now for the sauce! This sauce is amazing. It is so good that I would eat it with anything I possibly could. Even if there were nothing else there I would eat it plain by itself. In fact, there were leftovers after this meal, but I was out of bread to sop up the sauce. So, instead of bread I used tortilla chips. It was ghetto, but so good.

After you remove the shanks strain the stock and pour it back into the pan. and cook over a high heat until it forms a sauce consistency.

Serve each shank over the parsnips, and pour over the sauce. Eat and all your wildest foodie dreams will come true.

Ingredients

Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 small lamb shanks
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 leek, roughly chopped
1 celery stick, roughly chopped
½ a head of garlic
A sprig of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf/a sprig of fresh rosemary/2 star anise 300ml dry white wine
1l chicken stock
100g butter
4 large parsnips, peeled and chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Extracted from Kitchen Heaven by Gordon Ramsay, published by Michael Joseph on May 6 at £20, © Optomen Television and Gordon Ramsay, 2004.