Beef shank with Wine and Pimentón sauce —and Maui and the Hawaiian islands

December 8, 2025

Natacha Sanz Caballero

Meat and Poultry, Occasions & Journey
consolation meals, Hawaii, Maui, Saint Damien, Spanish delicacies

If November 2024 began with a visit to London and Edinburgh, November 2025 hasn’t lagged behind in pleasure, with a visit to lovely Maui, within the Hawaii archipelago. An ideal excuse to accompany this publish with a celebratory dish, beef shank with wine and pimentón sauce.

However don’t get me improper, I’m not saying beef shank with wine and pimentón sauce ought to solely be made for an important day. It’s simply that it’s a type of dishes that appears lovely in your plate and on the similar time, feels comforting — the type of dish your youngsters coming house for the vacations are craving and can recognize.

Again to Maui.

It was an virtually final minute journey that we loved because of the generosity of my mother-in-law, Penny, and her brother Alan and his spouse Jill, who personal a stunning home in Wailea, on the southern coast of the island, that they graciously open to household and associates.

The turtles at Ho’okipa Seashore

The city of Paia

A stroll via Makawao

Morning stroll in Wailea

Maui, like all islands within the Hawaiian archipelago, has a volcanic origin. Actually, the islands are a sequence of volcanoes rising from the ocean ground. They’re fashioned by molten lava emitted via holes in tectonic plates which are slowly shifting within the route of Japan.

The Island of Maui, the second largest within the archipelago, is made up of two adjoining volcanoes, Haleakala and the West Mountains, which grew collectively at their bases as their peaks grew greater above the ocean. The bigger volcano is Haleakala, measuring over 10,000 ft excessive. Haleakala means home of the solar. A subject journey to the Haleakala volcano was a should. I’ve to warn you, the drive up there has plenty of curves and it’s at all times uphill but it surely’s well worth the journey. The panorama is nearly moon-like, and breathtaking, and there you’ll discover wildlife not discovered anyplace else, just like the ahinahina or silversword (plant) and the nene (fowl).

Nene at Haleakala

The observatory at Haleakala

Silversword grows at Haleakala Volcano Park

A little bit of historical past

The Hawaiian islands and their folks have an fascinating historical past (and what historical past is just not fascinating!). It dates again at the least 1000 years earlier than the American colonies turned a nation in 1776. The precise date when Polynesian folks first set foot on these beforehand unhabited islands is, nonetheless, not identified, since Hawaiians have been a folks with out writing, who preserved their historical past via chant and legends.

Trendy Hawaiian historical past begins on January 20, 1778, when Captain James Prepare dinner’s expedition first landed there. On that day, Hawaii‘s lengthy isolation from the world past its horizons got here to an finish. From that second on, conventional Polynesian society developed via a sequence of cultural and social occasions that included: contact with Western know-how and concepts, inhabitants decline, huge immigration of non-Polynesians, overthrow of the monarchy, a brief lived republic, annexation as a US territory, World Warfare II, and changing into the youngest American state.

Strolling via Paia

Solar setting at Wailea

The Hawaiian folks

The primary newcomers to Hawaii have been folks of European ancestry, adopted by People who got here as explorers, adventurers, businessmen, whaling and service provider seamen and missionaries. Among the many Caucasians who got here in small teams as agricultural staff have been Russians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Germans and Norwegians. Subsequent to come back in giant numbers have been the Chinese language, with the primary main group arriving in 1852; then the Japanese, Phillipinos, Koreans, Puerto Ricans and Samoans. Intermarriage with Hawaiians turned frequent, to the purpose that at present, just one.5% of the Hawaii State inhabitants is of pure Hawaiian ancestry. 

Missionaries

The vast majority of the missionaries who got here to Hawaii within the earliest years got here from Puritan New England. Judged by at present’s requirements a lot of their concepts have been slender and illiberal; nonetheless, they established colleges all through the islands that taught many topics not related with faith.

Swimming in November!

Makawao

The hibiscus, a flower of Hawaii

Sundown at Wailea

Sundown at Kihei

The missions additionally inspired the event of agriculture and manufacturing with which to offer Hawaii an financial base in buying and selling with overseas nations. They launched western drugs and undertook the dominion’s first fashionable census. The missionaries should be credited additionally with serving to Hawaii turn into and stay an unbiased nation at a time when Hawaii was ripe for colonization.

Father Damien of Molokai

Probably the most well-known missionary was, undoubtedly, father Damien, who in 2009 was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI to turn into Saint Damien of Molokai.

Father Damien was born in Belgium in 1840, baptized as Joseph de Veuster. He entered the congregation of the Sacred Coronary heart at Louvain as a youth. Within the 1860s, Hawaii was alarmed on the unfold of leprosy, significantly among the many native Hawaiian folks. Medical opinion held that the one solution to forestall additional unfold of the illness was to isolate the victims. The Hawaiian legislature selected lonely Kalawao, a peninsula on Molokai Island’s north shore, because the place of settlement. Kalawai turned a type of pure jail, surrounded on two sides by tough seas and at its again, minimize off from the remainder of the island by steep cliffs. The federal government deliberate to furnish cattle, medical care, and common shipments of meals and different provides.

In 1866 the primary boatload of sufferers was torn from their weeping kinfolk and departed from Honolulu. Upon arrival, they discovered that the so-called hospital had no beds, that medicines and medical doctors have been in brief provide, and that meals shipments have been undependable. The sufferers lived in sordid circumstances and forged out from society. No try in any way was made to remedy the illness.

After finishing his coaching at Louvain, younger father Damien was assigned to the Sacred Coronary heart Mission in Hawaii. On a go to along with his Bishop to the leper settlement, Father Damien was struck with the struggling and virtually complete abandonment of the victims. He remained behind and shortly requested the bishop‘s permission that he’ll be allowed to remain and serve the lepers. He had determined to dedicate his life to the alleviation of the bodily and religious distress of the sick.

Saint Damien of Molokai

Younger Father Damien of Molokai

Father Damien labored alongside the lepers, serving to them to acquire meals and heat clothes, construct housing, and guarantee a provide of fresh, potable water. He constructed chapels and orphanages. His enthusiastic and loving closeness to the unlucky resulted in him contracting leprosy, however he continued to work. Ultimately, his selfless labors have been acknowledged, and the federal government undertook the obligations it had so lengthy prevented. Because the information of his dedication and his work unfold all through the world, funds and assist got here pouring in.

He died on April 15, 1889. Fellow lepers buried him, however in 1936, on the request of the Belgium authorities, his physique was returned to the village of his delivery. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II and subsequently canonized as a saint by Pope Benedict XVI.

I may go on concerning the many extra elements of the Hawaiian historical past, together with its politics, its kings and queens and the autumn of the monarchy, its strategic geographical location that turned clear throughout World Warfare II, its agriculture (pineapples! sugar!), its folks’s traditions, together with tattooing, and browsing… however this publish would get too lengthy, and it’s time to get cooking!

I go away you with some photographs of my journey to Maui, with the Haleakala volcano and the West Mountains, and the attractive seashores and cities we visited —Ho’okipa Seashore with its surfers and turtles, the roosters roaming freely in every single place on the island, the colourful cities of Paia, Makawao, Kula and Kihei, a drive via Lahaina, the place the consequences of the devastated 2023 fires have been evident, the sandy seashores of Wailea, the place we practiced some snorkeling, and the stress-free walks alongside the ocean shore.

Beef shank with wine and pimentón sauce is a scrumptious, comforting dish that appears wealthy on the plate however that’s easy to make. The 2 hours simmering time will let you arrange a timer and overlook about it, whilst you go about your day and duties. The great thing about gradual cooking.

Take pleasure in!

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