Ingredients
- 1 cup onion chopped fine
- 2/3 cup carrot chopped fine
- 2/3 cup celery chopped fine
- 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
- 1 teaspoon garlic chopped fine
- 2 strips lemon peel with none of the white pith beneath it
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- Eight 1 1/2-inch-thick slices of veal hind shank, each tied tightly around the middle
- Flour, spread on a plate
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1 cup basic homemade meat broth [stock], or 1/2 cup canned beef broth with 1/2 cup water
- 1 1/2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped, with their juice
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 or 3 sprigs parsley
- Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill Salt
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Choose a pot with a heavy bottom or of enameled cast iron that can subsequently accommodate all the veal shanks in a single layer. (If you do not have a single pot large enough, use two smaller ones, dividing the ingredients into two equal halves, but adding 1 extra tablespoon of butter for each pot.) Put in the onion, carrot, celery, and butter, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook for about 6 to 7 minutes, add the chopped garlic and lemon peel, cook another 2 or 3 minutes until the vegetables soften and wilt, then remove from heat.
- Put the vegetable oil in a skillet and turn on the heat to medium high. Turn the veal shanks in the flour, coating them all over and shaking off the excess flour. Note: Do not flour the veal, or anything else that needs to be browned, in advance because the flour will become soggy and make it impossible to achieve a crisp surface. When the oil is quite hot – it should sizzle when the veal goes in – slip in the shanks and brown them deeply all over. Remove them from the skillet using a slotted spoon or spatula, and stand them side by side over the chopped vegetables in the pot.
- Tip the skillet and spoon off all but a little bit of the oil. Add the wine, reduce it by simmering it over medium heat while scraping loose with a wooden spoon the browning residues stuck to the bottomm and sides. Pour the skillet juices over the veal in the pot.
- Put the broth in the skillet, bring it to a simmer, and add it to the pot. Also add the chopped tomatoes with their juice, the thyme, the bay leaves, parsley, pepper and salt. The broth should have come two- thirds of the way up to the top of the shanks. If it does not, add more.
- Bring the liquids in the pot to a simmer, cover the pot tightly, and place it in the lower third of the preheated oven. Cook for about 2 hours or until the meat feels very tender when prodded with a fork and a dense, creamy sauce has formed. Turn and baste the shanks every 20 minutes. If, while the ossobuco is cooking, the liquid in the pot becomes insufficient, add 2 tablespoons of water at a time, as needed.
- When the ossobuco is done, transfer it to a warm platter, carefully remove the trussing strings without letting the shanks come apart, pour the sauce in the pot over them, and serve at once. If the pot juices are too thin and watery, place the pot over a burner with high heat, boil down the excess liquid, then pour the reduced juices over the ossobuco on the platter.