There are lots of things I’ve never done. Skydiving, bull-riding and splitting the atom to name but a few. I could blame circumstance or say that the right moment never came along, but the cold hard truth is that I have done none of these things due to a chronic lack of interest on my part. That’s not the worst of it. There are some challenges I am yet to tackle not because of apathy but something more sinister. This unnamed reluctance sits on my shoulder like a deep fried chip and prevents me from having a go. It is, I think, a fear of failure. This deeply held paranoia stops me from attempting a hook-turn (too confusing), swimming with the dolphins (what if they hate my guts?) and, most tragically of all, from attempting to cook lamb shanks.
There are lots of things I’ve never done. Skydiving, bull-riding and splitting the atom to name but a few. I could blame circumstance or say that the right moment never came along, but the cold hard truth is that I have done none of these things due to a chronic lack of interest on my part. That’s not the worst of it. There are some challenges I am yet to tackle not because of apathy but something more sinister. This unnamed reluctance sits on my shoulder like a deep fried chip and prevents me from having a go. It is, I think, a fear of failure. This deeply held paranoia stops me from attempting a hook-turn (too confusing), swimming with the dolphins (what if they hate my guts?) and, most tragically of all, from attempting to cook lamb shanks.
A well-cooked lamb shank is the Holy Grail of home cookery if, in fact, that grail had your photo superimposed on the front like a novelty coffee cup and your named spelt out in Bedazzler gems. You can keep your Croquembouche, your soufflés and beef bourguignons – no one ever came home from work, desperate to hoe into a caramelized beetroot and goat cheese tart. In stark contrast, the shank is the ultimate homecoming meal, a supreme comfort food, and attempting to master it has brought more than one aspiring cook well and truly undone.
In the butcher trade, the lamb shank is often referred to as ‘the Mona Lisa of meat cuts’. Back in 1987, the world’s greatest butcher, Aristotle von Cleaver (better known as ‘the Prince of Mince’), bestowed the ultimate honour any butcher can give by awarding the ‘golden apron’ to the humble shank. A shank is not so much a chunk of meat as it is a piece of art. I suppose I’ve always worried that, after toiling for hours, I’d end up with nothing but meaty, gristle-hammers that taste like a shoe tongue, good only for use as timpani mallets. Or, even worse, by simmering the life out of the shanks, I’d create a meal fit for the undead; with the shanks transforming into some horrible creature that threatened man, woman and child. I would call this horrible creation, ‘Shankenstein’. I simply never saw myself as shank-worthy.
Over the years there have, of course, been a multitude of tributes, aside from the golden apron. Just outside the town of Hoofdale in Southern New South Wales is the famous ‘Big Shank’. Made of fiberglass with simulated braising, the Big Shank stands just over seven and a half metres tall, protruding from a base of concrete mash potato that houses a combination information centre and kiosk. There’s a circular staircase on the inside that leads to a lookout. From there, you can see miles of paddocks in which the shanks of the future happily graze.
Although there are no major works of fiction based on the lamb shank, there have been heaps of musical tributes. For starters, there’s the work of Ravi Shankar, whose sub-continental spin on a family favourite pretty much revolutionized the shank back in the sixties. There have been plenty of bands, too. Back in about 1992, our group competed in a university ‘battle of the bands’. The name of the competition was somewhat misleading, as the musicians didn’t engage in any hand-to-hand combat, although doubtless that would have been a lot more entertaining.
Our band was named ‘the Pilchards’. It was probably our first mistake. We took our name from a breed of very small fish when, instead, we should have picked something a little more robust. Had we called ourselves ‘the Rib-Eyes’ or even ‘the Cutlets’ we might have been a lot more successful. The event was held at a hotel in Carnegie, a venue famed both for high quality rock and roll and ten dollar Parma and pot night on Tuesdays. Sadly, we were playing on a Wednesday and had to make do with second-hand accounts of how great the previous evening had been, but even this failed to dampen our enthusiasm.
The atmosphere was electric, although this may have been the result of an oversupply of power to the main stage, causing a small electric shock every time your lips touched the microphone. The running order was determined by ballot. The first band to take the stage that evening was ‘the Shanks’ and it soon became apparent that they had a lot in common with their culinary namesake. They played a meaty, sinewy brand of rock and roll and seemed to take a couple of hours. Given that each band had a twenty-minute time limit, this counted heavily against them in the judging. In contrast, the Pilchards were, to a man, diligent timekeepers. In the end, we won through a combination of our superior musicianship, song-craft and punctuality. I never heard of ‘the Shanks’ again. Sadly, they had failed to live up to the awesome promise of their name.
There comes a time when you must push your fears, like salad at a barbeque, to one side. I slaved, toiled and (most of all) adhered to the recipe as though it was carved into stone. I did not accidentally create Shankenstein. It was, I’m pleased to say, if not a meal fit for a King, then at least fit for a band that was almost disqualified from a campus battle of the bands competition in 1992. In fact, in the best possible way, I had made a complete meal of it. That, at least, is something.