Dave's Kitchen Nightmares

Four delicious-looking Australian lamb shanks. A Manager's Special at Stop & Shop Friday, two per package, and just $1.99 a pound. Seemed like just the thing to quell a lamb jones that'd been nagging me for the past couple of weeks.

I got the shanks home and pulled them out of the cryovac packaging. They looked good and smelled okay when I gave 'em a whiff, so I rinsed them off, patted them dry, and started them off in a Dutch oven, on their way to being braised lamb shanks.

A few hours later and the family was sitting down to braised shanks, garlic mashed potatoes, and fresh green beans, with a tureen of gravy made from the braising liquid and veggies, forced through a sieve and thickened by reducing over a low fire.

My daughter took a bite of hers and wrinkled her nose. "Very lamby," she noted. She doesn't really like lamb a lot, but she'll eat it as long as we don't have it very often. Usually I make grilled lamb loin chops, or some other mildly-flavored cut.

My shank was kind of, well, strong-smelling. Not in a real pleasant way, either. I cut off a bite and there was no question as I tasted it - this shank was rank. Spoiled. Since they'd all cooked together in the Dutch oven, I didn't want to take any chances, so all four of them went into the bin and the gravy went down the drain. My daughter remembered how many times Gordon Ramsey has been served spoiled food by restauranteurs on Kitchen Nightmares and got a big kick out of yelling in an English accent, "How did you not smell that? Are you trying to f---ing kill me?"

Luckily, we still had plenty of mashed potatoes and green beans. I took some genoa salami out of the fridge and used it to roll up some ridiculous faux sushi, which were reasonably fun to make and cool to look at, but which came up kind of short in the "tastes good" category. (The dog seemed to like them, though.)

Thank goodness for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.