I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Upon my arrival in York, one of the first things I did was go to the market in the center of the city. This can be a dangerous thing, as you can imagine, as local produce, both flora and fauna, are on display. I have a weakness for good local meats, and a penchant for the cuts that require extra care and attention. Thus I was drawn toward the ham shank. At £2.95 per piece, it was also quite economical.

With that in hand, or in rucksack, I looked at the other options. The new potatoes looked good, and were only £1.50 per kilo, while the sprouts cost twice as much and looked equally good. So for a quick three quid, a full kilo of 'taters and a 1/2 kilo of sprouts joined the ham shank in my bag.

Then it was back to the bus, to the car and so to home.

• a good sized fresh ham shank, uncured, unsmoked, un-anything
• 1/2 kilo of new potatoes (or larger potatoes cut accordingly)
• 1/2 kilo brusssels sprouts
• salt
• pepper

Take your ham shank and give it a medium sized dose of salt, working it into around the bone and into the places where the meat naturally comes apart. Don't neglect the skin! You want a lovely crunchy skin, don't you? A teaspoon might be a good amount to start with, but if you want more, go crazy. Much of the salt will run off with the fat and gelatin during the cooking process, so you might end up with very salty pan drippings, but there are worse things and you can always dilute that down if need be. Hit it with some black pepper as well. Place it on top of the potatoes and stick it in a slow oven, 150C/300F for about an hour and twenty minutes. You need the long and slow cooking to get the chewy bits to start to break down.

Somewhere in that hour-twenty, wash your sprouts and trim as needed. When the hour-twenty is done, add the sprouts to the roasting dish and raise the heat to something like 190C/375F, and give it another hour. At that point, test the potatoes to make sure they're done. Remove the roasting dish and let it rest for a few minutes. If all has gone well, you'll have tender meat, sprouts and taters and crispy skin.

Serve with a little butter for the veg, and depending on how heavy-handed you were with the salt and pepper, perhaps a bit more at table.

This dish, spectacularly simple and simply spectacular, has already become a staple of my diet; I've made it three times. Since I'm cooking for one at the moment, I get two or three meals out of it, before I run out of potatoes and sprouts, and then another one or two with the remaining pork. Part of the reason I get so many meals out of one shank is that the meat is so rich that a little goes a long way. It takes a bit of time, but it's time well spent.