Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Veal breast

Sat. 23 Dec.
Poitrine de veau, actually, more a petto di vitello, since the recipe is Italian (Marcella Hazan), but in fact it differs nary a whit from the French version.
We went with Holt's father out to Jungle Jim's for the full jungle experience. Besides the fish for the Sette Pesci, we bought a veal breast. This is a bony, fatty cut of meat, but one of the best ways to have veal. There's much less waste than you might think and at $1.99/lb. we buy one every time we go to Jungle Jim's. This also accounts for the superabundance of veal stock that we have in the freezer.
You can stuff a veal breast very easily, just by running a knife under the ribs (a Mr. Sparafucile taught me that trick). Fill with spinach, bread crumbs, etc. But even simpler is just to roast it at the People's Temperature, whole, covered, with a little garlic and rosemary, adding a cup of wine at the start. After an hour toss in your choice of root vedge. Cook for another hour. The cool thing is, as the meat braises, it auto-Frenches, that is, the meat pulls back from the ribs. Cut between the ribs (that's easy), and then locate the corresponding point on the chine, to separate into ribs (that may take a bit of force). We served that last of the yard chard on the side, with the vedge and pan juices.

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