Aromatic lamb shank curry

I'm jumping the gun. Like, so high. I'm catapulting over the gun, 1km skyward through the clouds with a nice soft landing in a pillow factory. This week we had about 5 days over 20ºC. A couple around 25ºC. It was weather for tacos, grilled fish and salad, maybe a gelati. And like the topsy-turvy fool that I am, I went an bought lamb shanks.

It was around the time I had the sniffles, and just felt like some comforting. Comfort food for me does not come in the form of mac and cheese or scalloped potatoes or other such stodge (that, let's be serious, I'd love any other day of the week). Nope, when I'm feeling poorly, it's spicy food all the way.

Side bar: did you know what my all time favourite pasta is? Bucatini amatriciana. And it's not because of the name (mostly). It's a spicy tomato based sauce with porky bits of guanciale (that's cured pork cheek, fellas), the holey spaghetti known as bucatini and grated pecorino on top. BUT. It's all about the spice for me. In fact, I'm not even sure the spice is authentic. I know for sure it's not authentic the way I make it: with a big heaping spoon of sambal oelek (basically pure, unadulterated chilli).

Seven hour lamb shoulder

Roasting lamb for seven hours takes a lot of commitment. Roasting anything for more than three is a big ask. For me, it's not just the hanging around, fiddling with the meat, but the precious real estate it takes up. I could be baking a cake or biscuits in my oven during that time. Several cakes!

This weekend, with a pretty nasty hangover, I woke up and realised I had to get the lamb in the oven shortly. But before then, I had to make hot cross buns (stay tuned!) and profiteroles. They would take a good couple of hours. Before I knew it, it was 8am, I was out of bed on around 5 hours sleep and baking like a mad woman.