Spring Cooking: Asparagus and Farro Salad and a Simple Braised Lamb Shank

A vegan salad and my way of handling shanks and braising cuts of meat for everyday use

Asparagus and Farro Salad

I love cooking and eating at this time of the year. The air can still be crisp and cool enough to enjoy stews and soups, and at the same time, the spring vegetables are hitting the market and you can start to prepare lighter meals. I eat beans all year round, I use them as sustenance and body in vegetarian meals and when I am cooking meat, I often like to add beans to make it go further. I rarely sit down and eat a “piece of meat” but rather treat it as one component of a meal or dish. This helps me to more easily afford better quality meat from small farms, as does buying ‘lesser cuts’ such as shanks and other cuts that require slower cooking.

Knowing what to do with lamb or beef shanks can often be a little daunting, not to mention inconvenient if you are in a hurry to get something on the table for dinner. At some point I got into the habit of cooking off a larger batch of shanks (beef or lamb) or braising cuts such as lamb shoulder or chuck steak than I needed for just one meal, which helps immensely to make these cuts accessible to weekday meals. I cook them very simply, usually in nothing more than water with a few stock vegetables such as carrot, celery and onion, perhaps a little white wine and a handful of tomatoes if I have some on hand. Once cooked, you can take your wonderful, tender meat in a myriad of directions: add curry spice and coconut milk, perhaps a couple of potatoes; more tomatoes, harissa and black olives; roasted pepper paste, a little allspice and cumin; star anise, ginger and soy. And if you also add some lovely legumes and vegetables to the mix, you can really make it all go a long way. You can, of course, also reserve a portion of your cooked and ready-to-use meat in the freezer for another time, a little gift to your future self.

This week I braised a lamb shank- a large one weighing almost 2 lbs, then added in some beans and capers at the end; the next day I added some different beans (because you can never have too many beans), some left over farro and some chopped mustard greens that were growing wild in the garden, topping it with gremolata- a mix of finely chopped parsley, garlic and lemon zest. It was so hands off I barely felt like I did anything, yet fed my family well, simply but well, for several days in a row.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I also treat beans and grains in this same way, preparing more than I need for the meal at hand, ready to add quickly to another. I made the following asparagus and farro salad several times last year and actually wrote the recipe down, which I frankly never do. I did this because it was really good, and more than a few people told me to do so. This year, when asparagus returned, I needed to see if it actually held up, and indeed it does!

Braised lamb shank and beans (top right) form part of a spring dinner with bread to sop up the juices.