Mary Sawyer was a young girl who lived in Massachusetts in the early 1800s. There was nothing particularly striking about her except that one day, at the suggestion of her brother, she took her pet lamb to school. A commotion naturally ensued, which ended up with the teacher writing a poem about it, which in turn became a very popular nursery rhyme.

A statue representing Mary's Little Lamb stands in the town center of Sterling, Massachusettes and till today mere tots know about her and can sing to her tune. Yes, Mary’s lamb is probably the most popular lamb in the world, except perhaps for Dolly.

Back in 1996, Dolly was the world’s hello to cloning possibilities. The BBC dubbed her ‘the world’s most famous sheep’, named after the famously busty country western singer – Dolly Parton. Dolly the sheep sadly departed in 2003 but her remains are still exhibited at the Royal Museum of Scotland.

Surely you got the gist by now. It’s lamb talk today. Or perhaps we could say lamb fodder. Lamb has long been a staple of the Maltese kitchen and chef Mark Triganza has laid out a delicious dish of lamb shanks.

Mint is the main herb, and the star ingredient of this easy-to-prepare dish. This herb has been used in cuisines since time immemorial, for its medicinal value to treat stomach ache. But not only: you might recall that Pliny the Elder, the famous Roman writer who insisted that his students wear wreaths of mint round their head because he believed ‘that mint improved man’s mind’.

Now this was never a Maltese tradition, but perhaps it’s never too late to adopt it.

Ingredients:

4 lamb shanks

6 large potatoes

2 aubergines

4 marrows

4 carrots

2 onions

1 mint sauce

1 English mustard

olive oil

fresh rosemary

white wine

Serves 4

Preparation time: 15 min

Cooking time: 50 min

Method:

Prepare the mashed potato and put aside. Heat some oil in a pan. Place the lamb shanks in the pan. Add a rosemary twig. Leave on heat till lamb is sealed. In a separate dish, place the sliced onions, carrots, marrows and aubergines. Remove lamb from pan and place in dish with the vegetables. Add mint sauce to the remaining sauce in the pan and leave to simmer for a few minutes, also adding two glass of white wine. Pour over the lamb and vegetables. Place dish in oven at 180C for 50 min. Serve over a bed of mashed potatoes.