Pop the ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning, turn it on and you can spend the rest of the day playing tourist, going for long walks or field testing chairs knowing that dinner is cooking. Yeah.

• 2 kg lamb shanks
• freshly ground salt and pepper
• 2 x 400g tins cannellini beans (or kidney, borlotti, your choice), drained well
• 1 x 400g tin Italian style chopped tomatoes, un-drained
• 375 ml white wine
• 2 onions (chopped)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed

Trim the silver skin from the lamb shanks. In fact, I do this with all of my casseroling meats because, even though slow cooking WILL tenderise meat, I like to give the process a help along. Dust the shanks with the freshly ground salt and pepper and place them to one side.

Spray the inside of the slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray and add the drained beans, tinned tomatoes, wine, chopped onion, oregano and garlic. Mix the ingredients (minus the lamb shanks) together well with a wooden spoon.

Place the lamb shanks on top of the bean/tomato mixture. Place the lid on the slow cooker and cook on LOW for about 10 hours.

Serve in individual bowls with a vegetable mash or simply heaps of crusty bread. Yum.

By Lynn Bain, as featured in Caravan World, issue 456, August 2008.