Peasant Food, Fit for a King

When I went shopping for lamb shanks a few days ago, my butcher was out of them. Same thing at my backup butcher, and at my two local supermarkets. When I expressed my frustration to one of the supermarket meat stockers, he replied: “You should’ve gotten here earlier in the day.When the weather gets cooler like this, those lamb shanks are the first things to go!” That’s understandable, because lamb shanks are the quintessential meat for braising, which in turn is the quintessential cooking method for autumn. With the weather getting cooler, an aromatic assortment of meat and vegetables simmering for a few hours sounds like just the thing to make the house feel — and smell — cozy.Strictly speaking, braising means browning the food in fat or oil and then simmering it in liquid over low heat in a covered vessel for a lengthy period. Why cook a nice piece of meat in liquid, instead of tossing it on the grill? Because braising cuts are, well, not so nice, at least not in their raw state.Taken from sinewy areas like the neck and foreleg, they feature an abundance of connective tissue and would be too tough to eat if grilled, roasted, or panfried. The slow braising process breaks down this tissue, producing fork-tender results.Because braising cuts were traditionally sloughed off on the lower classes (and are still relatively inexpensive today), dishes like lamb shanks and short ribs were considered peasant food for years. But that’s now changing.“It’s been a total transformation,” the chef at Park Slope’s Stone Park Café (324 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, 718-369-0082), Josh Grinker, said. “Instead of poor people’s food, things like short ribs are real specialty items now.”Why the change? “I think chefs love to cook these cuts,” Mr. Grinker said. He offers braised short ribs all year long (including a wonderful short rib hash for brunch) and will soon be adding lamb shanks, rabbit, and other braised dishes for the fall season. “It really brings out the full flavor of the meat, and in many ways it’s the essence of cooking, because you’re transforming something inedible into something delicious.”That takes time, because a braise has to simmer over low heat.You may be thinking — as I once did — that boiling water is still 212 degrees, whether it’s at a rolling boil or a gentle simmer, so why not save some time by braising over high heat?But as the English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall explains in his excellent “River Cottage Meat Book,” “The molecules in fast-boiling water are moving many times faster than those in slowsimmering water.” (The book is currently available only as a British import, but an American version is due out in February.) If exposed to the assault of those faster molecules, the flavor and juices will be driven out of the meat.Just because braising takes time doesn’t mean it can’t fit into a busy New Yorker’s schedule. Once you’ve got everything in the pot, most of the cooking time is maintenance free — just turn the flame down to low and then go do your laundry or whatever for the next two or three hours. If you’ve got a slow cooker, you can even set up all the ingredients before you go to work and program the cooker to braise the meat during the day and keep it warm until you get home.The most classic braising cut, regardless of the animal, is the shank. This is the butchery term for the front shin. Not exactly the meatiest specimen, right? But a good braise can turn it into pure culinary gold. This is the veal cut that produces the Italian classic osso buco, the pork cut that produces Maloney & Porcelli’s signature crackling pork shank, and the lamb cut that will be showing up on menus all over town as the nip in the air gets more prominent.

Peasant Food, Fit for a King

Peasant Food, Fit for a King

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