Oh its cold dear readers, colder than a witches teat. Probably shouldn’t say that, I’ll anger the pagans. You know I noticed the other day at a bookshop that there are so many books dealing wholly and solely with cupcakes that they have their own shelf, and this was a Dymocks, not a particularly cupcake centric environment. Made me think I’d gone entirely too mainstream so I vowed to make my next entry sugarless. So here I shall reveal to you the recipe I make whenever it’s cold and I’m feeling in need of bolstering. One gets bored making the same kinds of things all the time anyway, before I did the Melbourne Show generally I wouldn’t make sweet stuff, only on occasion for kids birthdays or friends or when dining guests felt the need of sugar coated comfort and requested it. I don’t want you thinking I’m all one sided or anything. I can cook stuff, really I can.
Osso Bucco or Ossobuco depending on whether you care about spelling (I consider spelling a serving suggestion rather than a rule, shocking I know) is a dish originally from the Lombardy region in Italy apparently. It seems to be traditional in regional cuisine, regardless of which region the aforementioned cuisine happens to be from, to be very pedantic about exactly how the particular dish is cooked, which is understandable. If you feel connected to something you tend to want it to be represented in what you believe to be the best way. I have never been to Lombardy and in fact wasn’t aware that this dish was from Lombardy until after I started cooking it so I have no allegiances to declare. For me it started when I was in uni and it was cold and I wanted meat but couldn’t afford much of it so it had to be cheap, I also wanted something that I could cook once and then eat for a couple of days after and so my version of Osso Bucco was born. If you are from Lombardy you may wish to look away now, I won’t apologise, it is delicious.
I think part of the relationship with food we have is the sometimes selective belief that it can heal us and make us feel better. I say selective because by that logic food that was not so nutritious should then makes us feel sick but we don’t tend to think about that so much when we’re reaching for a little of what we fancy, we nibble on the sly and hope that Mother Nature doesn’t notice. I know that if I feel seedy some lemon juice in water will always make me feel better, if I’m coming down with a cold I’ll make myself something with lemon, parsley and garlic as key ingredients and I can’t go more than 2 days without green peas. Whenever I feel a cold coming on or if I feel as though the ravages of daily life are getting on top of me I go to the butcher and get myself some shin, beef or veal either is fine, they even call it Osso Bucco so you can’t go wrong, I make sure I have some wine on hand, something halfway decent, if you can’t drink it you really shouldn’t cook with it, I mean it’s not like you have to go out and secure yourself something from Chateau Lefite but if there’s a cask of wine you have sitting under the sink that you’ve taken with you from the last three houses you’ve lived in when someone left it at your place after a party you had to celebrate the end of the second year of your arts degree and you didn’t want to drink it but you thought you could get rid of it at the next uni party you had, don’t use that. Throw it away, you’ll never drink it, no one will ever drink it, it’s the lost wine of your twenties and you can never get it back but it’s ok, your friends will get richer and leave you better wine in your thirties, you’ll feel better once you’ve moved on.
One of the next key ingredients in Osso Bucco is stock. If you have something to prove to yourself then by all means make your own stock at home, I will tell you this though, no one is impressed by you, if you have to do it because all the other stocks you find contain gluten and you have someone gluten intolerant coming to eat with you then ok but don’t get arsey about making your own stock. This is an egalitarian cooking blog, if you choose to make your own stock then good luck to you big fella but no one should feel ashamed for using the bought stuff. Get yourself some Bay leaves, these were a relatively late edition to my Osso Busso recipe but they really do make a difference I find. You can add any other type of herbs you like but generally for me I don’t like to add too much of anything, everything in this dish has its own part to play, function rather than fancy. You can cook this in any manner you wish, if you have a nice heavy casserole dish you can cook it on the stove top or in the oven but for me I tend to use my electric fry pan. Ah the electric fry pan, reminds me of my youth, for some reason my mother used ours to cook pretty much everything, the stove top was used for boiling the kettle and vegetables and the electric fry pan was used for everything else. I got one for Christmas from my dad one year and its come in very handy, it allows you to control the heat and slow cook very evenly so I’m describing this recipe on that basis but adapt it as you wish.
Heat a little olive oil in the pan, add a chopped onion and sauté until a little soft, add a little chopped garlic and then brown your beef just to get a little caramelisation happening, let’s go on the assumption that you’re cooking for between 2 and 4 people here so you have about 4 pieces of Osso Bucco. Add your red wine, I like to have a lot of sauce with my osso so I would use about 2 cups of red wine, let this bubble at a high heat for a minute or so to allow the alcohol to evaporate, I find it makes the overall result a little sweeter and more rounded. Add your beef stock, again about 2 cups and a couple of tablespoons of a good tomato paste, lower the temperature to a slow simmer, add your bay leaves at this point and leave it to simmer for at least an hour. After an hour peel some carrots nice big chunky ones and leave them in fairly good sized pieces about the size of your thumb is a good reference, throw them in and let them cook. After another hour peel some potatoes and cut them into chunks as well, I don’t use anything to thicken my sauce when I’m making this dish, I find generally I don’t need to. Osso Bucco means hollow bone, when you buy the Osso Bucco you’ll find that the big bone in the centre of the meat has this kinda creamy marrow in it that will melt into the sauce during the cooking adding to the flavour and thickening the sauce naturally, the potatoes will also assist with thickening as well depending on whether you use floury ones or waxy ones.
When making this dish so I could take a photo for you I decided to make some mashed potatoes as well coz it was particularly cold and I had a friend over to spend the night in watching Dr Who, any excuse is a good one for mashed potato. I don’t know how I became such a geek but Osso Bucco and the Dr was a good night in damnit, we also drank 3 bottles of wine so maybe that helped. One little trick I’ve found with the mash though is that if you heat the milk and butter before adding it to the potatoes it makes them so much creamier. After about 45 mins poke your potatoes with a sharp knife to test them, once the potatoes are ready you’re pretty much close to the end. About 5 mins before I serve I add green peas, oh I love peas sometimes I have them for dinner all on their own, if there is a dish in existence that cannot be improved by the addition of peas then I don’t want to eat it sir. I also make a little gremolata at this point, which basically for me is just lemon zest and parsley finely chopped. Traditionally this would also include garlic and anchovies and if you want to go for that you certainly can, for me particularly if I’m feeling a smidge fragile the combination of the raw galic and anchovy is a little much for me where as the Osso Bucco itself is hearty and sustaining and the parsley and lemon curbs it from being too rich and stodgy. To continue the festival of carbohydrates some crusty bread is nice to go with this dish, it does improve in flavour the next day as well which is what makes this one such a winner. If you happen to get drunk drinking your wine and eating your Bucco the night before and get up the next day wondering if it really was that delicious or if you just had drunken taste buds it’s nice to get a little boost when you try it again and have your dreams realised all over. Make it and share it around, it will be the making of you and your loved ones.
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