How nice to see lamb shanks with their heady, homey bursts of flavor enter the culinary mainstream in this country.  This state of affairs is due in part, I’m sure, to the decrease in “continental” restaurants with their ubiquitous racks of cute pink lamb, and the concurrent rise of the bistro or café favoring socially, and anatomically, lower cuts of meat. (To put it indelicately, eating below the knee is à la mode.)  Heading toward oblivion are black-tied navigators of rolling carts with pockets full of matches for setting off tableside two-alarmers.  In their place behold servers in shirtsleeves toting simple grills, perky little salsas, wholesome, earthy ragoûts, the food of the people — well, the food of the middle- and upper-income foodie.

I

Our first version is more or less Italo/New American:

Roll your lamb shanks in a marinade of olive oil, pressed garlic and crinkled rosemary needles: the more the jollier. Then brown the shanks vigorously in a large pot without added fat, turning them at least once, pour off the unwanted accumulated fat and deglaze the pot with a good splash of balsamic vinegar.

In a 350° oven simmer the shanks, covered, for at least 1-1/2 hours with quite a bit more vinegar, 2/3 of a 14-ounce can of beef broth and 1 small chopped tomato. Serve (after reducing your sauce 10 or 20 pct. on top of the stove) with parsleyed mashed potatoes or green pasta with butter and grated cheese, or risotto verde.

II

This variation was inspired by a meal at Maykadeh, a jolly Persian restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach:

In the simmering stage add 1 peeled and diced eggplant (pre-steamed a bit) — or perhaps some pitted prunes? — plus some saffron and currants in addition to the previously given ingredients; serve with plain rice and you could pass a dish of yogurt. For the tomato element, optional now, you could consider a medley of baby specimens in yellow, orange, green and red.

NOTE: An excellent pasta dish may be had by halving the amount of lamb shanks in this recipe, cutting the meat into bite-sized pieces and combining it and the eggplant/etc. with fettuccine or lasagne.

        This one is obviously for company, a classic and attractive harmonization, souvenir of a lunch in Provence in 1969. The vignette that sticks in my mind from a very wet and wintry March day is a waiter with umbrella treading gingerly across the garden outside our window and fetching cheese from a recess in an outdoor grill where it was cleverly stashed, on call for an appearance on our table just below room temperature. No self-respecting Frenchman, of course, would indulge in that ugly habit of holding a good Brie hostage in the fridge. The adjacent misto I would term a close cousin of a presentation for which I reserve the softest spot, a plank of sliced steak and veg served to Anne and me with a flourish on our wedding night. The place was Pietro’s 311, in San Francisco’s long-gone produce district. To reach Pietro’s after dark one tread lightly along Washington Street past stray turnips, abandoned romaine and supplementary tomatoes dented like tins.

        Now in this location we enjoy the mightily attractive EmbarcaderoCenter with its terraced gentrification, but there’s much to be said for the no-nonense orange-crate ambience of the old district, an independent state almost, with its heady carnival of the vegetables.

Before embarking on a five-ring circus of a cooking spree, make a Béchamel sauce: melt 1 tablespoon of butter, stir into it 1 tablespoon of flour and slowly add 1 cup of milk, stirring constantly until the sauce — to which you’ve added a pinch of nutmeg — begins to thicken. Reserve, keeping warm, and proceed to:

1.     Bake tomato halves topped with olive oil, pressed garlic and oregano, dill weed or tarragon for about 20 minutes in a moderate oven.

2.     Boil scrubbed new potatoes, whole or halved, applying a little melted butter when they’re done.

3.     Steam Blue Lake string beans and sauté them briefly in butter before serving.

4.     Boil fennel bulbs, each cut in two and mostly de-stemmed, then remove them to a baking dish, top with the Béchamel and run under the broiler with a sprinkle of grated dry jack or parmesan cheese on top.

5.     Fry lamb chops brushed with a little olive oil and pressed garlic, observing the usual rule of more time and flame for the first side than the second.

Arrange at least the chops, beans and tomatoes on a platter, put the potatoes in a serving dish if they won’t fit on the platter, and serve the fennel from its baking dish.

P.S.:   For an emergency mini St-Paul, abandon fennel and beans, mash the potatoes with lots of milk and butter and grit the tomato topping with a nice crumb base.

(Five items at least)

        We were introduced to this savory parfait/napoleon/sundae at the East Side Oyster Bar and Grill in Sonoma. It’s tricky but spectacular, a gastronomic house of cards whose quick and inevitable collapse is not to be considered a demerit: it’s the taste that counts, not the engineering. I think this dish’s composition is intricate-&-elegant enough perhaps it should have been deconstructed and reassembled in the assonant acrobatics of a John Updike paragraph. Updike is one of the better music and art critics, I wish he’d take on food as well. Meanwhile don’t tell anyone we left out the hash brown potatoes.

        And lest you voyage to Sonoma and its adobes-boutiques-bike trails-wineries-cheesemongers in anticipation of this parfait-or-whatever, I have to inform you its creator vanished into Florida a year or two ago and the Eastside venue a few doors from the town square is currently, I think, a straightforward Italian bistro, parfait-less.

Your object is to serve a pagoda of the following, reading from the bottom up:

Mashed parsnips, sweet and red potatoes combined

Sautéed sweet potato discs 1/4 inch thick

Lamb medallions (ideally, boneless lamb but chops are entirely viable)

Caramelized baked red onion rings

Matchstick leeks, “deep fried”

“Au jus” sauce to pour over all

For the mash: simply boil and mash the vegetables as one normally would.

For the discs: save some of the sweet potato from the mixed mash ingredients, slice it, boil it, then sauté it in a little butter until somewhat brown.

For the lamb: simply cook the meat until it’s done to the home chef’s taste.

For the onion rings: remove the rough outer skins of the onions, slice them thick, coat them with a little butter and bake at 375° until they’re soft but not mushy (figure on at least 30 to 40 minutes); be sure to salvage some of the accumulated caramelized sugar from the baking.

For the leeks: wash them and cut them into very thin strands about 2 inches long, then toss in some olive oil in a skillet (the oil need not be really deep) until they’re crispy.

For the jus, rather thin: stir some meat broth into the lamb drippings.