Name: Lamb Shanks with Quince (Ayva Yahnisi)
Cuisine: Turkey
Ingredients: butter 50 g/2 oz; olive oil; lamb shanks 4; brown sugar 4 tbsp cinnamon 1 tsp, ground quinces 4, cored and quartered juice of a lemon; allspice ½ tsp, ground pomegranate molasses 3 tbsp pepper salt; cloves 3; cinnamon 2 sticks; onion 1 large, finely chopped

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Yashim Cooks Istanbul

By Jason Goodwin

Published 2016

About

‘Eating the quince’, in Turkish, means having a tough time: they are not to be taken lightly raw. But cooked – in marmalades, too – they are delicious; as fruit they are beautiful to look at and smell divine. In Istanbul they are sold by men who carry them in baskets on their backs, and wander the streets in the deep winter snows.

Ingredients

lamb shanks 4
olive oil
butter 50 g/2

Method

Brown the shanks in oil over a low heat for 20 minutes. Pour off the fat, drop in the butter, let it melt, and add the onion. When it has softened, fling in all the spices except the ground cinnamon, along with the pomegranate molasses, a cup of water, pepper, salt and half the sugar. Give the pan a stir and set it to simmer gently with a lid on for an hour and a half. If the