Adiós Brad

Over our time in Bend, we have gravitated to Viaggio, a favorite wine bar, and we have come to know many of the regulars. So it was with Brad, with whom we struck up an easy acquaintance. Sadly for us, he decided to relocate to Florida. He let us know in the Thanksgiving time frame that he would be gone by mid-December. Naturally, we needed to host a farewell dinner to wish him on his way.

A dinner for three people is truly an odd number, both as in not an even number and a slightly bizarre number for a dinner, but three it was. I just so happened to have a package of three beautiful center-cut veal shanks in the freezer waiting for just such a dinner. Three people and three portions of ossobuco, perfect!

As Brad was packing and trying to avoid schlepping a lot of wine across the country, he volunteered to bring the wine. And when he learned the meal was ossobuco milanese, he brought two bottles of Barolo, the quintessential pairing for this classic dish.

Almonds and Olives to Start

Barolo. What Else to Pair with Ossobuco?

Ossobuco Milanese

The Guest of Honor

1989 Trockenbeerenauslese

After dinner, in lieu of dessert, I opened a 1989 trockenbeerenauslese that I bought in Germany at Kloster Eberbach in Eltville just up the Rhine from Wiesbaden and Mainz. The once-amber Riesling had turned the color of raisins, oxidizing heavily over the years. The nose was of Madeira, Sherry, and raisins, but the acid was still screaming.

Brad, best wishes on a new life in Florida!

Dreaming of Italy

Ann and I have been planning a big vacation for years now, ever since our last major vacation of nearly two weeks in Alaska (Anchorage area and the Kenai) in 2021 during a gap between COVID outbreaks. Our next big trip will be next fall, tentatively a big circle of northern Italy from Firenze to Bolzano and back, taking in sights in Toscana, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia, il Veneto, and the star of the show, i Dolomiti (Tyrolean or Dolomitic Alps) of Trentino-Alto Adige (Südtirol).

A goal of this trip for me as a chef will be to get off the beaten path and sample local dishes that will continue my education into and expand my repertoire of Italian regional cuisine. As an aside, I doubt very much that I will be ordering classic dishes in Italy as I have cooked them all and so they no longer pique my curiosity.

Because of all this trip planning, we are thinking of all things Italian. It is perfect timing then, that this week when looking through the meat section of the grocery, I saw some particularly good looking beef shank cut for osso buco, the classic braised dish of Lombardy and Milan, in particular. I don't think our itinerary will include a stay in Milan, but still, I never can resist making this milanese classic when I have the opportunity. Served on a bed of risotto milanese (saffron risotto) with a bottle of Barbaresco, this dish was a delightful counterpoint to our crappy snowy and rainy winter weather last night.

Ossobuco on Risotto Milanese

I've made several posts on this blog and I'm sure other posts on the restaurant blog about osso buco. I've made lots and lots of very different versions from many different kinds of meat (veal, beef, elk, venison, bison, pork, cinghiale (wild boar), and others). This post goes over the way that I most often make it at home, braised in wine, tomatoes, and aromatics. This is in contrast to at the restaurant where it might have been braised in demiglace and porcini and then finished with truffles. In other words, this is my rustic, casalinga version.

Home-Style Ossobuco

This recipe describes braising the ossobuco in a slow cooker. There is absolutely no reason why this could not be cooked slowly on the stovetop or in the oven using a dutch oven or other covered braising pan. At the restaurant, we used flat hotel plans covered in aluminum foil; in other words, no fancy equipment needed. If you are going to braise in a pan, you can (and should) brown the meat and the aromatics directly in the braising pan.)

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt

large pinch coarse black pepper
2 large shank portions (mine were extra large and weighed in at 2.8 pounds/1.25 kg)
olive oil to film a skillet or sauté pan
1 large leek, finely chopped
1 large carrot, in small dice
1 large stalk celery, in small dice
6-8 large cloves garlic, minced
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 cup/250ml (1/3 bottle) dry red wine

1 28oz can of diced tomatoes and their juice

The steps, illustrated below, are simple. Dredge the shanks in seasoned flour and brown. Cook the aromatics and herbs. Add the remaining dredging flour and cook it a bit. Deglaze with red wine and add the tomatoes. Combine all the ingredients and cook slowly until the meat is fork tender.

When selecting ossobuco, if you have a choice, always look for the slices that are more meat than bone. There is little more disappointing than being served a piece of ossobuco that is almost all bone, which is sadly what a lot of grocery store ossobuco amounts to. Too bad that we have no place to buy veal ossobuco, however, the beef ossobuco in the photo above is as pretty as I have ever seen.

Mix the flour with the salt and pepper and cover both sides of the shanks in flour, knocking off any excess. Brown over medium heat until well colored on both sides.

While the beef is browning, if you have decent knife skills, you will have plenty of time to prep the aromatics. In the winter when leeks are in season, I prefer to use leeks rather than onions. Of course, onions work just great too. I prefer fresh herbs in general for this dish. The exception is basil in this winter season when fresh basil is scarce.

Seasoned Flour, Red Wine, and Tomatoes

I'm really picky about my tomatoes and I have my favorite brand. I tend to use very finely diced tomatoes packed in juice, though it would be no problem to use whole romas and crush them slightly using your hands or a food processor. As for wine, I do not cook with the same wine that I want to drink with the dish, the opposite of what some people recommend.

The wines that I like to drink are far too expensive and delicate to be cooking with. Moreover, the reason for the wine in the dish is simply to supply some acid to help break down the meat, and any reasonably priced well made wine will do this for you. For white cooking wine, I buy inexpensive dry box wine because we never have any leftover white wine (for we rarely drink white wine and pretty much never in winter).

For red wine, we are always buying sample bottles to see if we want to buy case quantities for the cellar. Invariably, we have bottles that while being decent wines, simply are not to our taste. Those become cooking wines. The Matthews wine in the photo above, we bought on a lark merely because that is my surname. Sadly, it was not to our taste despite being highly rated by the wine talking heads.

After the meat is browned, cook the aromatics and herbs in the same pan, being sure to scrape up all the brown meat bits off the bottom of the pan. These bits have amazing flavor that you want in your braise. When the vegetables are soft, add the remaining dredging flour, stir it in, and cook it for another minute or two. Then deglaze (use the liquid to get any solids off the bottom of the pan) with the red wine and add the tomatoes. Stir all the ingredients well. Then if you are using a slow cooker, pour the sauce over the meat. If you are braising on the stovetop or in the oven, nestle the meat into the sauce. Cover and cook at low heat.

Above, you see the meat after it has been browned, then covered in sauce before cooking, then after braising for seven hours. The meat was done after about six hours on low in the slow cooker, but I wasn't ready to eat then, so I let it go for another hour. On the stovetop or in the oven, I would guess that the dish would be ready in about three hours. To tell if it is done, stick a fork in it and if you meet no resistance, it is ready.

A final note about salt. You will notice that this dish contains but a half a teaspoon of Kosher salt, not enough to season it. So, when it is done, you will need to taste and season the sauce according to your liking. I specify seasoning the dish after cooking because when you braise, you gradually lose liquid volume to create a silky, unctuous sauce. If you season to taste before the liquid cooks off, the finished product is going to be hella salty.

Parting Shot: Risotto Milanese Starting to Cook

As I mentioned before, I served the ossobuco on risotto milanese with a great Nebbiolo wine, a Barbaresco. Sadly, I cannot really go into making risotto in a blog post. It, like making biscuits or handmade pasta, takes hands-on experience to learn the feel of the dish.

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.

Christmas Dinner

Our plan for Christmas Dinner did not go nearly as planned. I closed the restaurant for lack of business on Christmas Eve and Ann and I were going to get in the kitchen together and make osso buco while relaxing with a bottle of wine. And then we were going to take a hike on Christmas Day and finish off the day with a nice pasta, as a reward for good behavior this past year. We haven't eaten any pasta in months and our waistlines show it.

Osso Buco, Risotto Milanese, Oregon Black Truffles

That was the plan, but the reality was much different. Ann spent a few days at her mother's and ended up following the ambulance to the ER on Christmas Eve because her mom was having more heart problems. Late afternoon on Christmas Eve after they admitted her mom for observation, Ann was able to get away and come home about dark. So much for getting in the kitchen and cooking. And as frazzled as she was, I just opened a bottle of wine and after some by-the-glass therapy, we cooked some pasta, and watched Love Actually for the umpteenth time. This was definitely not how we scripted Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day, we hung around the house without taking a hike, waiting for the call to come get Ann's mother and take her home. About 11:30 in the morning, it was clear that the hospital was taking its time in cutting her loose, so we decided to hurry up the osso buco into the crockpot so that it would be waiting for us when we got home.

Osso Buco Bubbling Away

We got the call about 2pm to come into Fairfax and as luck would have it, Mary had just got to the front door as we pulled up, so we didn't have to wait on her. After visiting with her mom and me making a quick pot of stracciatella for her to eat, we headed west on the drive across the mountains to Winchester. Once again, it was about dark when we got home, but this time we arrived to the awesome smells of osso buco.

We collected our wits for a few minutes and then Ann went on an explore in the cellar for wine (because we drank our osso buco Barolo the night before) while I pulled together the mise for risotto milanese. I also happened to grab a few truffles from work for our risotto, an indulgence that we partake of only once a year.

Risotto Mise: Leeks, Shallots, Oregon Black Truffles

Just Starting the Risotto: Adding the Saffron

Risotto Milanese Ready for Service

Ann surprised me with two bottles from the cellar that I was supposed to guess blind. Unknown to me, she pulled a couple of 2011s from our friend Maggie Malick. I couldn't place the first wine, the Cabernet Franc. It was bricking from age, the color was fading, but the fruit was bright sappy raspberry with a darker cherry undertone and some bottle funk. I couldn't place the wine at all and was shocked when she showed me the bottle: Virginia Cabernet Franc.

Outstanding Aged Virginia Cab Franc

The second bottle, I could place. It was a dead ringer for 2009 vintage Pinot Noir from Ribbon Ridge AVA in Oregon. Only one problem: we don't have any in our cellar. I was dumbfounded to find that it was Virginia Merlot. Merlot makes sense in that it has this juicy blueberry streak that you also find in Ribbon Ridge Pinot. Damned delicious and better than the Cabernet Franc. Age has a way of making certain wines really graceful. Time was excellent to these two and I know they taste far better now than when they were bottled.

Even More Outstanding Virginia Merlot

New Year's Eve

Veal Osso Buco on Risotto Milanese

A few weeks ago, I was wrestling with whether or not to open the restaurant for New Year's Eve. You wouldn't think that there would be anything to think about: of course, a restaurant should be open on New Year's Eve. But in recent years, business on New Year's Eve has been slim and this year, it was on a Monday night, normally a glacially slow evening and a night on which we are normally closed.

To make matters worse, we didn't even have an inkling of an inquiry about New Year's Eve from customers until the week before Christmas. It wasn't like the phone was ringing off the hook for reservations. And so I waffled for a few weeks and this waffling caused Ann to hope that I might be able to celebrate the new year with her. But after talking with other restaurant owners, sticking my finger in the air to test the winds, uttering a few incantations, and finally, listening to my gut, I decided to open.

Ann was extremely disappointed in this. I think the 'we might be able to celebrate together' morphed into 'we are going to celebrate together' in her mind. Such is the restaurant business that we don't get to spend these occasions together. She knows it; I know it. But it doesn't make it any easier. At least I am at work and my mind is fully occupied. She is at home being a restaurant widow.

By way of compromise, however, I promised her that we would have a late dinner and ring in the new year together. I have noted in years past that in our town, people dine at my restaurant before heading to wherever they are going to ring in the new year. While in many big cities and towns, customers are fighting for the 9 and 10pm tables, here in Funchester, they all want to dine from 6:30 to 7:30pm. And so I took advantage of that by closing reservations at 8:30, which let me get out by 10:30, though my poor staff were there much later. Guys, sorry about that, but rank has its privileges. I'm not all about pulling rank, but sometimes it has just got to be done.

Well, holy crap! New Year's Eve was the busiest night of 2012! I came staggering in the door closer to 11 than to 10:30 and all I wanted to do was collapse. But when I saw the table was set, candles were lit, and New Year's streamers were hanging from the balcony above the living room, I couldn't collapse. What a great suprise that was! A glass of Prosecco and a fifteen-minute sit in a chair and I was ready to put dinner on the table.

Ann had mentioned the day before that she would like osso buco on risotto milanese for our dinner and unbeknownst to her, we had both osso buco and lobster on risotto milanese on our New Year's menu at the restaurant. Score! So I brought home two pieces of osso buco and some risotto base. All I had to do was nuke the veal to reheat it and give the risotto its final five minutes of cooking.

We had a great dinner with another glass of wine, tidied up, went upstairs, watched the ball drop, kissed and wished each other Happy New Year, and I promptly passed out in what Ann terms "1.3 seconds." Such is the restaurant life!

But how lucky am I to have had New Year's dinner with my wife on New Year's Eve? That never happens in my business! What a great start to 2013!