Osso Buco for Ann's Birthday

I'm way behind in posting this, but I've been busy building a new shelf/bookcase for the kitchen and doing the design work for a new wine bar in our living room.

Months ago in the summer, I saw some beef shanks on closeout at the grocery store and bought a couple for the freezer for cooler weather. Osso buco is not something I really crave when it is warm out, but just let the cool fall weather set in and I am game.

Osso Buco on Polenta

We have really been watching what we eat trying to lose our COVID babies and have had some luck, down something like a collective 22 pounds. I promised myself and Ann that damn the diet, we were celebrating for her birthday as a reward for being so disciplined. Enter osso buco on polenta.

The Shank, 2-1/2 pounds

Here is the shank from the store. This is not a high-quality portion, but the price was very right. This one weighed in at over 2-1/2 pounds on the scale, but the vast majority is marrowless bone. You can't see the back side which is nearly all bone and no meat. Still, I managed to get 12 ounces of meat from the shank, enough to feed the two of us. A piece of shank such as this will never give you a photo-worthy, restaurant-style portion of osso buco with a nice marrow bone in the center, but it tastes no different and is plenty good enough for home cooking.

Browning the Shank

I started by dusting the shank with salt, pepper, and Wondra flour and then browning both sides in a nearly oil free heavy-bottomed pan. Notice the fond, the browned build-up on the bottom of the pan. This is a very good thing.

Soffrito in the Pan with Rosemary

Once the shank was browned, I removed it to the crock pot and added my soffrito and a branch of rosemary to the pan. Don't hate me, I put a bushel or more of rosemary in the compost bin this year after pruning. Rosemary grows like a weed here. The soffrito is celery, carrot, and leek, in roughly equal proportions: one leek, two carrots, two stalks of celery. In the photo, I have cleared away the soffrito in the center of the pan so that you can see the fond. This is where the flavor is.

Adding White Wine, Tomato, and Basil

Once the vegetables started going limp, I added a splash of dry white wine, call it a half a cup, to the pan and using a wooden spatula, carefully scraped all the bits of the fond off the bottom of the pan so that it can contribute its flavor to the dish. In went a 28-ounce can of peeled and diced tomatoes in juice, a handful of basil (still in bloom), and call it a teaspoon of salt.

Shank and Soffrito in the Crock Pot

I let everything cook together for about five minutes and then transferred it all to the crock pot, one of my favorite braising devices. Talk about easy: set it and forget it!

7 Hours Later

We went about our day and came back to the braise towards dinner time. See how wonderfully brown everything is: that's exactly what you're aiming for. I removed the herbs from the sauce, separated the meat from the bones and gristle, recombined the meat and the sauce, and seasoned to taste.

Meanwhile, I had a pan of polenta cooking. I have devised a no-worry means of cooking polenta that I discussed in an earlier post. This method eliminates almost all of the stirring and makes delightful polenta. I plated the deconstructed osso buco over the polenta as you see in the very first photo.

Pregame on the Porch with McKinlay Pinot Noir

The weather in early October is always a crap shoot in that we are on the cusp of our rainy season, but today our weather was delightful to the point where we shared a bottle of McKinlay Pinot Noir on the front porch before going in to dinner as it got dark and cool. This is a relatively unknown local bottle in the Burgundian style with restrained fruit and gobs of mouthwatering acid.

With only twelve ounces of beef and only cooking a half a cup of cornmeal for polenta, we managed to both eat decadently but with sensible portion sizes. This osso buco was a great splurge for us.