Lamb shanks have come a long way, as have many foods traditionally seen as ‘cheaper cuts’. Things that benefit from hours of slow cooking, which includes lamb shanks and beef cheeks among others, have become extremely popular in recent years, and following the inverse relationship of supply and demand the price has become increasingly unpopular. On the other hand there’s a lot of recipe variety for ways to prepare them, and this lamb shank curry is but one of them.
There’s a very well known book about the importance of punctuation called Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, the comma in the title giving rise to confusion about a hungry, homicidal panda. It occurs to me that some confusion could potentially arise about the title of this post so to be clear it is about Asian flavoured meatballs that are sticky.
Don’t go! Seriously, if you’re not into hot and spicy food hang in there, because this isn’t. Terms like ‘atomic’ and ‘Hiroshima’ have become (rather distastefully in my opinion) pretty clichéd with food, conjuring up images of having your head blown off with fiery chilli and spices and stocking up the freezer with toilet roll, but the truth of why this dish is called Hiroshima chicken is much more exciting than that.
Amatriciana sauce comes from the Italian town of Amatrice, east of Rome, where it’s the star of an annual public feast in August. It’s a very simple tomato based sauce with chilli and pancetta or bacon, and is easily my favourite pasta sauce. So much so, in fact, that I’ve been on a bit of a quest to find the best one in Adelaide (or really anywhere else for that matter).
Until I embarked on this blog writing endeavour I’d never really used Instagram, chiefly because I didn’t get the point. I had an account, in my name, with a grand total of one picture. Coincidentally that picture was of the dish with which I metaphorically kicked my dear friend’s arse and took out the trophy in our occasional Masterchef challenge. Starting a Dad’s Onion Instagram page was precipitated by a friend of a friend who, not content with a web page and a Facebook page to look at, asked if I had an Instagram page. Bloody ungrateful!
