Toothless Johnno and his missus Madam Secretary are known to be pretty good camp oven cooks. Remember the time Toothless almost blew us to smithereens when he put the camp oven beside the fire forgetting that there was a plastic bag of heat beads inside the camp oven. We were lucky that we weren’t all incinerated and washed down the Goulburn River after that episode.

Toothless has redeemed himself with this recipe, with preparation courtesy of Madam Secretary and cooking by Toothless on the banks of Deep Lake.

Lamb Shanks

Allow 1 shank per person or 2 if small

6 lamb shanks

Plain flour

4 rashers of bacon chopped

½ cup sun dried tomatoes, chopped

¼ cup Port

½ cup Red Wine

1 Beef Stock Cube

1 Dsp Chopped Mint (or dried)

¼ cup Mint Sauce

8 small Carrots, angle diced

2 Sticks Celery, sliced

2 Tbs Tomato Paste

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Flour and fry shanks and place in camp oven (only if you feel like it, if someone has poured you a nice glass of red and you’d prefer to watch the world go by then just toss the shanks straight in the camp oven).

Fry onions and bacon until soft.

Add crumbled stock cube, wine, port, tomato paste, mint and mint sauce and sun dried tomatoes. Stir thoroughly and pour over shanks.

Add chopped carrot and celery and stir again.

Make sure the shanks are covered and add more liquid if necessary (to the pot not the cook).

Pop the lid on and cook for about 2 hours depending on the intensity of the fire (if it was a fire lit by Woody and I then it would take 10 hours and a lot of fanning).