Braised lamb hindshank on Punjab coconut cream curry with cashew, apricot, kale, and peas. The lamb is from a local rancher. Coconut cream is what I had available, which was almost too rich. Oh, who am I kidding? Coconut cream was amazing!

I prefer soltanas for this kind of curry, but apricots are what I had; the substitution worked great. I seared and braised the shank in a little bit of lamb stock I made from another meal, then crisped it up under the broiler right before plating. The result was crispy, creamy, almost-fall-off-the-bone meat.

As a sidenote for anyone else trying to rein in their grocery bill but are tired of ground beef/chicken/pork, shanks + curries are my go-to when I want a hearty, satisfying dinner that makes great use of whatever is available. The disadvantage of this is that the leftover bones are not really suitable for stocks; too much of the minerals tend to leech out resulting in yucky metallic notes in the stock. Rice would stretch this out, but we’re trying to bring our blood markers into normal range, so we’ve been scaling way back on the straight carbs.