Melt in the mouth slow braised pressed lamb

Slow braising lamb is not exactly rocket science. Even so, I can hardly claim it’s my own invention. I pinched the idea off a cooking show. Definitely Rupert Rowley’s idea.*

I saw through his fancy-pants cheffery at once. Past the la-di-da herb crust and caramelised onion mousse and sous vide tender loin and poached baby vegetables and aligot (cheesy mash).

A shoulder of lamb, very simply braised on the stove top and then pressed under a weight overnight. Dense, meltingly tender, rich and sticky, reheated in the strained and reduced braising liquid.

Not rocket science. Not even Michelin Starred Science. Just a perfect idea.

After placating Little Chocolate Flavoured P- with the promise of apricot frangipane pie, I commandeered her wood panelled country kitchen. Stripped of complications, glass of wine in hand, I did absolutely nothing for six hours.**

Braising is nothing new. Just time consuming.

Squishing things after they’re cooked is probably not new either. But this technique I despise in commercially produced chicken nuggets and processed hams results in a moist gelatinous and impossibly dense slab of lamb, infused with the braising stock flavours and melt in the mouth succulent.

I craved, no, coveted, this lamb ever since I witnessed it via the magic of television. Worth the wait? Oh G-d yes.

* Hairy Bikers Tour of Britain, Derbyshire Episode. The recipe for the braised and pressed shoulder is unfortunately not included on the BBC website.

** Not, strictly speaking, true. For a little while I surfed the net looking at chocolate art, and I whipped up two frangipane pies, helped Bird with the pomme de terre au gratin AKA potato bake, roasted a leg of lamb, baked some sweet potatoes, made gravy and generally made a mess.

Rosemary infused braised, pressed lamb with lamb jus

Boned shoulder of lamb, approximately 1 kg (although size doesn’t matter)
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut in half
1 large brown onion, peeled and cut into eighths
1 medium leek, cut into four pieces
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs rosemary
½ bottle dry red wine*
3 cups good quality beef stock (or a couple of beef bones, roasted in the oven for about an hour)
Kitchen string
Parchment paper (greaseproof paper), cut into a circle just a little larger than the saucepan, and with a 1 cm hole pinched in the centre
Fry pan and medium sized saucepan (just large enough to snuggle fit the piece of lamb)

Using kitchen string, tie the lamb up like a parcel. There is a neat way to do this that is a little like a blanket stitch and a little like a mobius strip (see this Epicurious video). Or, you could just tie it up any old way. This works too. Or ask your butcher to do it.

In a small fry pan, heat a small amount of olive oil. Add the tied lamb shoulder, turning occasionally to brown on all side.

At the same time, heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the saucepan and add the vegetables and herbs. Cook on a medium to high heat, stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked and starting to stick to the pan (but not burning).

When the vegetables are stating to stick, toss in half the wine and scrap around the pan to deglaze all the sticky vegetable sugars. Add the meat into the saucepans and deglaze the frying pan in the same way with the remaining wine, then tip that into the saucepan too. Add the beef stock (or bones) and add water (or wine or stock) to just the top of the meat.

Press the parchment paper onto the surface of the liquid and meat (like a second lid) and then place the lid on the saucepan. Turn the heat the lowest setting, and set to very gentle bubble away for about 5 to 6 hours. Check on it from time to time – make sure it does not dry out or burn onto the bottom of the saucepan, and gentle turn the meat over after about three hours.

When the meat is finished cooking, allow to cool slightly and then remove from the braising liquids and strain over the saucepan. Place onto clean parchment , cut the strings and discard, then wrap up like a Christmas present in the greaseproof paper. Tightly wrap this package in plastic wrap (I went several times around it all).

Place in a bake dish, then cover with another baking dish and then weight the top baking dish (I used a concrete statue of a cockerspaniel. You could use a brick). Leave overnight (food safety would probably dictate in the fridge, but I left it out on the kitchen bench).

Meanwhile, strain the braising liquid and discard the solids. Keep the liquid. That stuff is gold.

To serve: cut the lamb into neat portions. It is very dense and rich, so make them smaller than you think you might want.

In a small frying pan or shallow saucepan, heat a little olive oil and add the lamb portions. Add a few spoonfuls of braising liquid (which by now should have a lovely jelly like consistency), turn and add more liquid as it bubbles and thickens, until all sides of the lamb pieces are richly glazed. Remove the lamb ready to serve. Add addition liquid to make a sauce, heat through until thick enough.

Place lamb onto a bed of pumpkin puree, spoon over some sauce and enjoy.

* For goodness sake, only cook with wine you will drink. It doesn’t need to be great wine, but it does have to be palatable

Oxtail ravioli: short cuts versus cheap cuts

Idiosyncratic is probably a good word to describe someone who lovingly and painstakingly slowly braises, strains, cools, shreds and portions two kilos of oxtails over seven hours, and then uses frozen wonton skins as ravioli wrapping.*

Idiosyncratic is also a pretty good description of someone who sees this same lengthy and messy exercise as a somehow saving time.

Idiosyncratic, too, to spend all this time and effort to create what is essentially oxtail soup despite having overwhelming memories of avoiding at all costs an offering of oxtail soup as a child.

Consistency is the sign of small mind.

On any animal, the harder working the muscle, the tougher it’s going to be. On a cow, the hardest working muscle is always going to be a tossup between the cheeks (constant chewing) and the tail (constant flicking).

The lazy muscles result in incredibly tender cuts of meat, the most well known being filet (aka tenderloin, fillet, eye fillet etc - which is taken from along the spine). Even in organically reared, grass-fed, happy cows, fillet is a little bland in flavour. Quick-cooking, oh-so-soft, brilliant raw for steak tartare and Carpaccio. It’s a trade-off: texture versus taste. It’s a premium cut. Very expensive.

Because people and supermarkets have rocks in their heads tender cuts are almost universally preferred (consistency, as I said, is the sign of a small mind). And yet the idea of their being ‘premium cuts’ strikes me as a bit silly. It’s all from a cow, right? If we’re going to kill the beast, we may as well eat more than the softest quarter of it.

Particularly when the real flavour is found in the hard working ‘economical cuts’. Bring on the skirt steak and the shin. Pork and lamb necks. Beef cheeks. Hocks and brisket. And oxtail.

It’s cheap. And packs a punch of flavour. But it is often sinuous. It’s attached to tendons and bones and often has marrow in its near vicinity. All good for flavour, if a little tough.

Time to work the magic of braising.

Any idiot can burn a fillet steak. But it takes an even bigger idiot to screw up braising. The genius of braising is that there is no genius required. At its most very basic, a braise is a cross between a poaching and a steaming process, with meat (or vegetables) first seared / browned and then partially covered in liquid, covered and cooked over a very low heat for a long time. And the beauty of it is that whilst you can undercook it, it’s almost impossible to overcook it. It takes a long time, but it’s not really time consuming. Mostly it’s just a matter of being vaguely around to make sure it doesn’t bubble over or run dry or that the gas doesn’t go out.**

Slow cooking oxtails results in a sticky, gelatinous mess of soft-as-butter dark fibrous meat. Rather than serving with equally rich creamy mashed potato or risotto, shredded, wrapped up in ravioli sheets and poached in consommé made from the left over strained braising liquid, wine, water and bottled tomatoes, sprinkled with a little gremolata, zesty and garlicly and fresh, the resultant soup is light and lavish, meaty and yet not too indulgent.

So the trade off for cheap and flavourful is that is takes forever. But the short cut is that you can make it all in advance, in bulk, and freeze it. Straight from the freezer? Cooks up in about ten minutes.


* The frozen wonton wrappers have as the listed ingredients: flour, eggs, salt. That’s it. This, I think, is pretty good. Plus they’re the right size, thinness and so terribly convenient. And I don’t have a pasta machine. Pasta dough is easy enough to make (it has flour, eggs and salt in it). But you try rolling it with a rolling pin.

** I’ve heard it’s even more foolproof with a kitchen gadget known as a crock-pot.

Oxtail ravioli* in tomato consommé

Serves 8

2 kg oxtail pieces (or other beef on the bone, like osso buco or short rib)

Plain flour (seasoned, for dusting the oxtail)
¼ cup oil olive (roughly)
2 brown onions, diced
2 large carrots, diced
375 ml dry red wine
500 ml veal or beef stock without salt (or water)
Herbs – 2 bay leaves, sprigs of rosemary, thyme, oregano and parley
2 pack frozen wonton wrappers or ½ kg fresh lasagne sheets (bought or homemade)
1 egg, lightly beaten

Dust oxtail pieces with flour (shake). Heat a couple of tablespoons of the oil in a very large saucepan, and cook the pieces in batches until brown all over.

Heat another few tablespoons of the oil and add the onions and carrots, cook until starting to brown.

Deglaze the pot with the wine, stirring to remove any pieces stuck to the sides of the pot. Bring to the boil and cook until the alcohol is cooked off (a couple of minutes).

Add the oxtail pieces back into the pot, add the herbs and stock (it should cover about ¾ of the meat and vegetables. Cover with a parchment lid, and then place the pots lid securely on top. Place over the very lowest heat and gently cook for about 4 hour (it should be just barely a simmer, remove the lid if it is cooking too rapidly). By this stage the meat should be falling off the bones (if not, cook a little longer).

Remove the oxtail pieces, and when cool enough to touch, shred the meat and discard the fat and bones.

Strain the braising liquid and reserve. Add the strained vegetables back in with the shredded meat (discard the herb stalks and bay leaves).

Taste the meat and vegetable ravioli filling, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Place 30 wonton wrappers on the bench, brush the edges lightly with egg wash. Place a small spoonful of filling in the centre of each, and then place another wrapper on top, pressing to seal. You can freeze, refrigerate or cook at this point.

To cook, add to consommé and cook until the wrappers are cooked and the filling is hot. When frozen I just throw then into boiling water frozen and cook.

Serve in a bowl of tomato consommé, sprinkled with gremolata and parmesan cheese.

Tomato consommé

Reserved strained braising liquid.

For each 250 ml braising liquid:

1 tin chopped tomatoes (no added salt or added anything is preferable)

500 mls water (or half water, half red wine)

Boil all ingredients together until reduced by half. Strain. Season. Pour over ravioli to serve.

Gremolata

Traditionally, this is made with equal parts finely chopped parsley, finely grated lemon zest and minced garlic.

I have been known to use grapefruit zest, minced olives, and capers as substitutes and enhancements ...

* Based on a recipe by Elizabeth Egan and Domenic Pipercelli of Becco restaurant in Melbourne published by Australian Gourmet Traveller.

Rosé veal with rosé sauce and tiny toasted flower buds

I love the soft, sweet flavour of veal. I love the gentle pinkness of rosé veal, the only kind of veal I can bring myself to eat.* From there it is all word association and day dreaming with me.

Given how perfect white wine sauce is with veal, it is only a short step to matching a dryish rosé. I’m not a wine snob (as evidenced by my choice of wine to cook with solely on the basis of whim and colour). Rosé veal with rosé wine sauce just sounds clever.

In my culinary fantasy-world I imagine a dish scattered with rose petals or perhaps preserved or jellied rosehips, sweet and sour and floral. I’m imagining Heston Blumenthal type presentation, with little petals cut out of veal scaloppine arranged like a flower on the plate. It’s twee and arty and probably has fennel pollen scattered on it.

Setting aside my rose coloured glasses I instead make something much simpler. In the real world dinner takes fifteen minutes to cook. It is light, easy and tasty. Tenderised veal scaloppine, lean and quick cooking. Browned on both sides in a very lightly oiled non stick pan and then removed. I deglaze the pan with a glass of rosé. Boiled, reduced. Add the veal back in. I could strain it, but seriously, I am firmly back in the real world. Simmer, whilst steaming some vegetables. Five minutes later, it’s ready. Tip onto a plate – rosé veal with rosé sauce. Clever, quick, delicious.

Except: I can’t resist. In the wiped out pan, I heat some olive oil to sizzling. And I scatter in some little caper buds, preserved in white wine vinegar. They start to pop and crackle, brown and turn a little crispy. Little tiny toasted flower buds, scattered over the top. Not roses, but a savoury-sour floral flavour addition, pretty and nearly as clever.

* I know that, like my reticence regarding rabbit, many people struggle with the idea of eating veal. There is veal and there is veal. Rosé (or pink) veal is the kind that involves a more ethical and humane treatment – or at least avoids the worst treatments that have been traditionally associated with veal rearing. Please, please talk to your butcher about the origins of all your meat.

Rosé veal with rosé sauce and toasted capers

[Edited 24 May 2010] When Helen emailed me, from the other side of the world, I was a little surprised. I had sent her a recipe in response to her “Blogger Secret Ingredient Challenge” (capers) because there, in London, England, was a cook and writer and thinker who though things I would like to think and cooked things I would like to eat. To win, an even bigger surprise.

Serves 2

1 tsp olive oil
2 large veal scaloppine, tenderised
100 ml rosé (or dry white wine)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp capers in white wine vinegar (you could used salted, but rinse well first), drained and pat dry

Steamed or sautéd vegetables, to serve

Heat a non stick pan (big enough to fit the veal all at once – if your pan is only big enough to hold one piece, cook one at a time) to very hot. Add a teaspoon of olive oil. Sear the scaloppine on each side until quite brown and cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add wine to the pan – it will foam and boil almost instantly. Boil for a couple of minutes, until reduced and thickened slightly. Add the veal back to the pan and cook for a further five minutes. place a piece of veal on each plate and drizzle with remaining sauce.

Wipe out the pan (or use a clean one, it depends on how much washing up you want to do) and heat the olive oil. When hot, add the capers. Cook for about a minute, shaking the pan to prevent from burning or sticking. Scatter over the top of the veal.

Serve with a glass of rosé.

If you want dessert, try this.

The Great American Recipe: chowder

America is not exactly renowned for contributing to the great cuisines of the world.

Lots of accomplished chefs, but more famous, perhaps, for hot dogs and doughnuts and frozen pizza and TV meals. For adopting imported culinary traditions – ergo the California roll, the apple pie, the pastrami sandwich. For showcasing the food of the world in some of the best restaurants in the world. But not for offering its own unique food tradition.

Scratch the surface, however, and you find food that is informed and shaped around the immediate environment, local produce and climate, people and history. Perfect regional cuisine.

The New England clam chowder is a perfect example of a definitive regional cuisine. Incorporating key ingredients that are local (corn, potato, clams), chowder, whilst inspired by European fish soups, is quintessentially North American. Rich, sweet but also restrained and economical, this soup captures the New England terroir, warming in the cold, cold winter and fresh in the humid summer.

God bless America.

Seafood, corn and potato chowder

Serves 4

¾ cup dry white wine
300 g green tiger prawns
350 g mussels
350 g clams
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 carrot, cut into ½ cm dice
1 leek, white part only, cut into ½ cm dice
½ brown onion, cut into ½ cm dice
1 small bulb fennel, cut into ½ cm dice
2 rashers really good smokey bacon, cut into ½ cm dice
3 cloves garlic, very finely sliced
1 bay leaf
750 mls water
2 small waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into ½ cm dice
Kernels of 1 cob of corn
2 tbsp pure cream
2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Heat a very large pan with the lid on until hot. Add wine and seafood and cover. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the clams and mussels are open and the prawns are pink. Strain the cooking liquid and reserve. Set the seafood aside until cool enough to handle.

When the seafood is cool enough to handle, peel the prawns and remove the clam and mussel meat from the shells. Coarsely chop and set aside.

Heat butter and olive oil in the pan, add carrots, leek, onion, fennel and bacon. Cook on medium low heat for ten to twelve minutes until the vegetables are soft. Increase the heat and add reserved seafood cooking liquid, water and bay leaf. Bring to the boil.

Add potatoes and corn, reduce to a simmer and cook for about ten minutes until the potato is cooked through. Add cream and reserved prawns, clams and mussels. Stir until warmed through.

Serve scattered with thyme and parsley.

Brussels sprouts, bacon and boar taint

If there was ever a vegetable guaranteed to divide opinion, it is the Brussels sprout. Like all members of the cruciferous family, Brussels sprouts are naturally bitter. Not only bitter – but sulphurous. And not only naturally bitter and sulphurous, but more bitter and more sulphurous when cooked. Particularly when over-cooked.

Taste buds are fickle. Just ask the three bears about their porridge preferences. Taste is one of those profoundly philosophical problems: it is uniquely and specifically subjective. Are Brussels sprouts disgusting or do some people just experience them that way?*

On the other hand, there is an increasingly detailed body of scientific research about the chemical and physiological nature of taste (technical term: “gustation”). There are chemical markers that determine whether something is sweet or salty or sour or bitter. We have discovered “unami”, chemically distinguishable (ie, monosodium glutamate – the dreaded msg) and sensed as savoury –occurring naturally in some seaweeds and soya sauces and meat for example. Not all flavours can be physically tasted by all people.** Some –supertasters - are very sensitive, almost prohibitively drawn to bland food. Some – non-tasters – need ‘excessive’ seasoning and spices to taste food at all.

For example, Brussels sprouts are particularly unpalatable for children who have a much stronger sense of taste than adults.***

Like sprouts, pork is tricky. Setting aside the well articulated religious reasons for foregoing pigs, you run into a more amorphous minefield of personal preference and pernicketiness. Pigs have a pretty bad reputation for being dirty. For eating garbage and wallowing in it.

Not only this, but a significant percentage of pork is affected by something known as boar taint. Boar taint is an odour and associated flavour that affects some adolescent pigs. Boar taint results in that oily, sweaty, dirty taste that pork is sometimes known to have. Pork is now selectively reared to avoid this, and using immature and female pigs can help in minimising the risk. Still, pork is not universally loved, and it takes trust, love and care to put it on a plate and expect people to eat it.

An idea forms: pork and sprouts. Given their shared outcast status, pairing them makes sense. No. Bacon and sprouts. Crazy sense.

It's not really that extraordinary: bacon and cabbage is a reliable fail-safe recipe. And Brussels sprouts are really just tiny wee cabbages when it all boils down to it. Not so intimidating or icky after all.

Rather than boil or steam the sprouts – I slowly caramelise in a pan, develop what natural sugars they have, letting the sprouts draw in the smoky sweet bacon flavour. I tasted this, about half way through the cooking process: I was surprised at how sweet the bacon and caramelising made the dish. As the idea takes form, developing a meal that will appeal is a matter of balancing, tasting and re-balancing the flavours, like a mantra: salty (bacon); sweet (apple); bitter (sprouts); sour (mustard); savoury (pork).

These sprouts were not too salty, not too bitter, not too sweet and not too sour. In the words of Goldilocks, these sprouts were just right.


* To paraphrase Donald Davidson, the phrase ‘food is tasty’ is true if and only if food is indeed tasty.

Donald Davidson is a brilliant philosopher of language. See also the works of Tama Coutts on Davidson.
** Danielle R. Reed, Toshiko Tanaka, and Amanda H. McDaniel; ‘Diverse tastes: Genetics of sweet and bitter perception’ Physiol Behav. 2006 June 30; 88(3): 215–226.
*** Except me. I loved Brussels sprouts as a kid. Not so my mum: bought up on sprouts boiled until mush, she refused to cook them.

Caramelised and braised sprouts with bacon

Per person:

6-10 small sprouts, trimmed at stalk and cut in half
1 middle rasher of bacon, rind removed and diced into 1 cm dice
1 tsp grain mustard
40 ml white wine

Heat a tsp or so of olive oil in a heavy pan. Toss in bacon and sprouts. Cook at a high heat for a few minutes, shaking the pan occasionally, until the bacon and sprouts are starting to brown. Toss in half the wine, deglaze the pan (ie, stir around the pan to scrape off all the brown bits). When the alcohol cooks off, add the mustard and the rest of the wine, reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes or until the smell of alcohol is gone and the sprouts are just cooked (they should be soft but not soggy).

(For the vegetarians out there: there are lots of non-meat related ways to make sprouts interesting. For example: Steamed, halved, smeared with blue cheese, drizzled with honey and under the grill is also sensational.)

Moules mariniere (mussels in white wine)

I speak terrible French. More accurately, je ne pas parle Francais. I cannot pronounce even the most important of the words I do know (vin).

As if a long haul flight via Singapore via Heathrow to Dublin is not punishment enough, I arrived in France after an over-night sea voyage from the south-east coast of Ireland. Travelled from Roscoff by bus as the train was not running.

Through vineyards and fields growing artichokes and cauliflowers. Past old men on bicycles, one with a loaf of bread in the basket. I suspected these were plants by the French tourism authority.

To arrive at the top of a soaring nineteenth century viaduct. Then, according to Google maps, my hotel, charming and balconied, was only a short walk away. What became apparent was that this short walk was a devious and twisty path, and mostly a direct decent down about four thousand steps. Having missed breakfast, I was ready for lunch.

My first meal in France was a baguette with a selection of charcuterie and chevre purchased from a market, and a glass of vin rouge, ravenously consumed after the epic journey to the bottom of the valley. A picnic in bed. This was the view.

I surrendered to the cliché.

I stayed four days in Morlaix, on the coast of Brittany, pretending I could in fact read the menus. Eating everything but mussels: coquilles Saint Jacques (a delicious pot of scallops in white sauce with mushrooms and cheese), saumons fumes (smoked salmon), fruits de mer (a giant plate of mixed crustaceans and fish), huître (oysters, fresh with nothing but lemon) – all divine, but the French word for mussels eluded me.

And then: moules mariniere. A deep bowl of small mussels, steamed in garlic and onion and white wine and butter, served with pomme frittes. A bottle of rose, crisp, dry.

Nearby, middle-aged Frenchmen with easels resting on cobble stones made pastel drawings of the sail boats bobbing on the river. Overhead rose the spires of the gothic Eglise Sainte-Melaine and the arches of the nineteenth century viaduct. C’est la vie.

Moules mariniere

Serves two people as a main meal, or four for a light lunch or entre

1 ½ kg mussels
75 g butter
White part of two leeks, fined diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
6-10 stalks of thyme
½ tsp cracked pepper
120 ml dry white wine
½ cup chopped parsely

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

Clean the mussels (scrub them and with a sharp knife, remove any barnacles – most fishmongers will have already done this. Pull the fibrous thread off each one. Don’t use any that are broken). Set aside.

Melt half the butter in a very large pan. Add the leeks, garlic and herbs. Cook until soft. Add the wine and bring to the boil (this will be almost instantaneous) Cook off the alcohol (about a minute).

Add the mussels and cover with a lid (if you don’t have a lid, cover with foil or grease proof paper to trap in the steam). After a minute or two, you will notice the mussels are starting to open. As each mussel opens, remove with a slotted spoon to a warm bowl until all are open. This won’t take long – maybe five minutes. Some mussels just won’t open – discard them, just in case (I like to give then a good chance to open, leaving then in the heat a bit after the majority are open).

The mussels will have release a lot of liquid. Pick out the thyme stalks and bay leaf (some recipe suggest you strain the sauce, but I like the taste and texture of the leeks). Add the rest of the wine and the vinegar and bring to the boil. Cook for about a minute, then rapidly whisk in the remaining butter. Taste, and season if necessary (I don’t add salt to mussel because they are so salty naturally). Stir in the parsley.

To serve, fill a large bowl with opened mussels. Pour over sauce. Serve with pomme frittes (French fries) or crusty sourdough bread to soak up all the sauce.

Crumbed milk-fed pink veal, white wine sauce and the ethical debate

Let me state upfront: veal comes from baby cows.

Lamb comes from baby sheep.* Most pork comes from baby pigs. Most chicken for sale is nine weeks old.

Those of us who choose to eat meat (and those who eat it without any thought at all) clearly choose to eat it young. The taste of veal is not at all like its older incarnation of beef, but lighter and more subtle. Veal is a unique flavour, sweet and slightly sour from being milk-fed. Soft, with hardly any fat. In short: delicious, but it comes with a seriously bad public image.

Horror stories abound. Calves deprived of sunlight, denied iron in their diets, kept in fully enclosed ‘veal crates’, unable to even turn around or even stand up**. All this to render ‘beautiful’ white muscle.

If there is an ethical dilemma beyond ‘should we eat meat’, it is not in the youthfulness of the calf, but in its treatment.

I firmly believe that if we make the extraordinary decision to take life, we must not be indifferent to that decision. To take away life is one thing. To cause unnecessary suffering as we do so, a step too far. It leaves far too nasty a taste in one’s mouth.

Veal crates are now unlawful in the United Kingdom, the European Union and several States in the USA.

In Australia we do not eat veal deprived of iron and sunlight, reared in tiny unlit boxes and partially starved. White veal is not available in Australia. Veal produced in Australia is pink, reared on whole milk and a small amount of grain. Pink veal (or rosé veal, as it is known is the UK) is sweet and soft and has a delicate flavour. Cooked well, not medium (unlike the beef it will become, it tends to be a little tough if under cooked), crumbed or in sauce, to protect it from the heat, it marries beautifully with acidity – a squeeze of lemon, tarragon vinegar, white wine sauce.***

* depending on your definition, usually less than a year old.
** http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/veal.shtml

*** Try with a sauce made of white wine and capers-in-vinegar

Crumbed veal with white wine sauce

2 veal escalopes
¼ cup milk
Plain flour
1 egg
2 cups stale breadcrumbs, seasoned with a little salt and pepper
4 tbsp butter, and 1 extra tbsp
12 sage leaves
6-12 thyme sprigs
250 mls dry white wine (I used sauvignon blanc)
1 tsp corn flour
1 heaped tsp grain or Dijon mustard

Flatten the veal with a mallet (or ask your butcher to do this). Dip into milk, then dust with flour. Whisk the egg into the remaining milk, dip the escalopes into the egg mixture and then press firmly into the breadcrumbs to coat both sides.

In a large fry pan, melt two tablespoons of butter with the herbs. When the butter starts to foam, add the escalopes. If the sage leaves start to get crispy, remove and set aside.

When the escalopes are golden on one side, add two more tablespoon of butter and turn the veal over. When the veal is crispy and golden on that side, it is cooked. Remove and set aside.

Turn the heat to high, add the wine and mustard. Mix the corn flour with a little water to form a paste, and add to the pan. Cook until the alcohol is burnt off, and the flour is cooked (one to two minutes) – the sauce should have just started to thicken. Strain (it will probably have little bread crumbs and bits of thyme stalk in it!). Wipe the pan and return strained sauce, whisk in the remaining butter, strain again.

Spoon some sauce onto a plate, and serve the veal on top of steamed vegetables. Scatter over some crispy sage leaves. Eat with a contemplative conscience.

Chicken cacciatore: food for when it rains

I live here because it doesn’t snow. I love summer, humid weather, cotton dresses and Pimms cup. And as my city was hit by devastating and spectacular hail storms over the past two days I started to dread the long steep decent into autumn and winter, and the all too short thawing of spring. It may not snow here, but for nine months it is pretty damn cold.

Weather is evocative of food: summer is stone fruit and mangoes and seafood and salad and pineapple sorbet. Autumn is always mushrooms. The last of the tomatoes and the start of slow cooking. Dried beans and chard, potatoes and apples and pears. This is the stuff that keeps me going as the weather turns nasty.

We had invited people around for dinner on Sunday night, but with flooded roads and predictions of more wild storms, we started calling around asking our friends not to travel. Ordinarily this might seem an over-reaction, but I had seen for myself how the storms ripped through from the north into Melbourne on Saturday. My train back from a short visit to the country had been stopped an hour out of town, and the replacement coach took nearly four hours to get back. The bus depot was flooded, ankle deep in water. Roads were closed. Piles of ice lay at the sides of the road. Under the circumstances, not everyone came round. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to have been far from home last night.

All I wanted as the rain and wind whipped our windows was old fashioned Italian comfort food, the kind that simmers all day on the stove, making the house smell like onions, then tomatoes, then wine, then herbs, then just warm and savoury as it bubbles away.

In fact between the chilli chocolate soufflé cake* I cooked in the morning (filling the house with the scent of melted chocolate) to the fava bean dip (slowly cooked on the stove in onions and celery and thyme)* and the aroma of chicken cacciatore, I could just about bear the onset of winter.

I realise that cacciatore is a dish that has significantly changed over the centuries, but at its base it is the dish cooked by hunters, out in the forest, bulked out by the ingredients to hand: wild mushrooms, wine, cured meat, rabbit or chicken, wild herbs.

It’s a dish perfect for the start of autumn: rich with pureed fresh tomatoes, just starting to be squishy and overripe (picked up at a country market stall), cultivated mushrooms made more rich with the addition of dried porcini, a generous dash of red wine and smoky rich bacon from the organic pig farm I visited on Saturday morning. Served with slow cooked polenta, rich with sheep’s milk percorino. Cosy, warm and safe.

And plenty of left-overs.

* see http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/flourless-chocolate-cake-recipe.html for the recipe. I added 1 teaspoon of ground chilli, ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ ground ginger, and left out the vanilla. Tip: make sure you use very finely ground almond meal.

Chicken cacciatore

Generously serves six

12 chicken drumsticks, skin and knuckle removed
¼ cup corn flour
Salt and pepper
2 brown onions, diced
150 gm really good bacon
300 gm carrots, diced
300 celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 sprigs thyme
1 sprig rosemary
200 ml red wine
1 kg fresh tomatoes, peeled and pureed
1 kg mushrooms
5 gms dried porcini, soaked in ¼ cup water for about 20 minutes.

Coat the drumsticks in seasoned cornflour. Heat olive oil in very large saucepan, and cook the drumsticks until browned all over. Remove and set aside.

Add more olive oil to the pan, add the chopped onion and bacon and cook for a couple of minutes, until softening. Add the celery, carrot and garlic and cook until soft and starting to caramelise. Add the red wine and boil off the alcohol (the smell of alcohol will disappear). Add the pureed tomatoes and herbs, heat through. Return the chicken to the sauce, reduce heat to a slow simmer, and cook for an hour or so.

Half an hour before serving, add mushrooms and porcini (discard water).

Serve over slow cooked polenta or pasta or rice.