Braised Breast of Veal Lombardy style.
Take a large enough oven safe pot with a lid and get it hot over med. high. Just before adding the veal breast add veg or the like oil. (remember this, hot pot cold oil food wont stick) Olive oil will burn. Place the veal breast in bones up fat side down and brown, then turn to the bone side and brown. Remove the breast and set aside.
Then add Veg.to the hot pot: One small diced onion, a few sliced thick carrots, one stalk of diced celery, one head of garlic chopped fine, a fist full of peas (frozen work great). Add a chopped fine stalk of celery then toss and brown a little. Add some kosher salt, toss for a little while longer. (Need a good caramelizing action.) Deglaze with about a cup or so of hearty red wine. Then add about six or eight chopped tomatoes. Stir till the tomatoes start cooking. Then add a healthy pour of extra virgin olive oil to taste.
Add the herbs and spices, a couple of tablespoons each of oregano and basil. Add a teaspoon each of celery seed, grated nutmeg and black pepper. Then throw in a couple of bay leaves. Now, this is important; add a few stalks of fresh rosemary. You can use dry rosemary but I think the fresh rosemary is key. it definitely takes it up to the next level. Its good to use all fresh herbs but dry works great for everything but the rosemary. Turn the burner down to med low.
Turn the oven on and preheat to 350. With the ragu still at a simmer place the veal breast back in bone side down. Add some water till it comes up the about half way to the top of the veal breast leaving the fatty side exposed.
Taste the ragu and adjust salt and other flavors to your liking.
Cover the pot with the lid and put it in the oven. Roast it in the oven for three hours or until the meat starts pulling away from the bones and the top is all brown and roastylicious. Times may vary depending upon the size of your veal breast.
Oh and after about two hours carefully take the pot out of the oven and add several peeled and cubed potatoes. Caution! Be very careful when the pot is sitting out on the stove. Keep a towel or oven mit on the lid cause at this point your house will smell most wonderful and passers by will be overwhelmed with the temptation to remove the lid and look in. If the touch lid with bare hands they will certainly leave some skin on it. Put the taters in and put the pot back in for the last hour or so. They are added late cause they will turn to mush if you add them to early.
You have my personal guarantee that this simple rustic dishh is a little slice of the real Italy and your house will smell that way.
This following recipe is exactly how I do risotto. It is the only way to make it correctly. The two most important rules are only use Aborrio or similar rice and remember to add only hot liquids to the cooking rice, even heat the wine, cold or even room temperature liquids will ruin the rice.There are all different types of other things added but this is the basics. The above rice dish is cooked this way with chopped fresh, or dried and reconstituted wild mushrooms added early. After the rice is just about aldente shortly before it is finished add a couple of fist fulls of grated Locatteli and about a half cup of cream.
http://italianfood.about.com/od/tipstricks1/a/aa091697.htmI think I covered everything.
Topic: Ethnic and Regional Cooking (Read 225727 times)
