Ossobuco

This meat dish is apparently the signature dish of Milano; we didn't try it while we were there because I was afraid that they would use butter along with the beef. That said, I resolved to try and cook my own variation on the basic recipe. Last night was an experiment in cooking, to see what works and what doesn't.

I asked my wife to buy half a kilo of the appropriate cut; I don't know actually what this is. Unfortunately we were given one lump of meat; theoretically I should have cut it so to reduce the depth of the cuts, but I couldn't do this so I had to cut vertically instead of horizontally.

The recipe that I was following is: dice carrot, celery and onion then cook for a few minutes in olive oil. Then add a glass of white wine and some tomato paste; continue cooking for a few more minutes in order to boil off some of the alcohol. In the mean time, dredge the meat in flour. Remove the sauce from the pan, replacing it with the meat. Cook lightly for a few minutes in order to brown the meat. Then put the sauce back in the pan, add half a litre of meat broth and the meat. Cook for 1.5 hours over a low light, occasionally turning the meat over so that it doesn't dry out.

The first problem was as noted above, that the cuts weren't of the right thickness. I'm not sure that this is a real problem. The next problem was that we had no flour - we haven't been shopping since before Passover. Neither do I have any meat broth and I couldn't find anything suitable in the supermarket; I used onion soup instead. The final problem was that I got involved with something else and neglected to tend to the slowly cooking meat; as a result, the sauce dried out and burnt slightly. I added more onion soup and let the meat sit. It was cooked for two hours - quite possibly the unintentional extra half hour caused the problems.

The end result was actually quite good, especially the parts of the meat that were tender. I gave the bone to the dog who greatly enjoyed the bone marrow.

What have I learned from this? The most important detail is to ensure that the meat is always covered in sauce. One recipe that I saw covered the saucepan with aluminium foil before putting the top on, and cooking in the oven. Another possibility is using the slow cooker; here's a recipe for that. I think that I'll try this variation next time around.

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