Many of us had our earliest experiences with braised foods not at the pricey restaurants that have recently rediscovered their appeal but at the Greek diners that never forgot it. So it's not surprising that I associate braised lamb shanks with egg-lemon sauce, a Greek staple. But when I set about to recreate this standard dish I found the sauce superfluous. Though a slow-cooked pot of braised lamb shanks and root vegetables becomes so sweet that it begs for something to counter it, it is also so rich that the thick sauce (a primitive form of béarnaise, really) is overkill. Better, it seems to me, is to finish the braised shanks with what you might call lemon-lemon sauce, using both a lemon's zest and a lemon's juice. That little touch converts this dish from a delicious but perhaps one-dimensional stew to something more, a braise that may never look particularly elegant but tastes that way.
Full Recipe
Author
Mark Bittman | 2003-12-17
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