Ossobuco alla milanese

This meal was in a word, divine. This recipe came from Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cook Book. Nothing beats my older cookbooks for clarity and good results. The only difficulty is reading the parts about having your butcher do this or that. Today you are on your own and just have to hope you have enough of the ethnic group from the meal you would like to make in your neighborhood to have the proper ingredients. VA is the first area that I have lived in with not enough Italians. I found these wonderful veal shanks at the Costco in Fairfax. This recipe feeds 6. It really will as I cut it down for 4 and Jim only ate for 2.
Ingredients:
1 C finely chopped yellow onion
2/3 C finely chopped carrot
2/3 C finely chopped celery
¼ C butter
1 t finely chopped garlic
2 strips lemon peel
½ C vegetable oil
8 shanks of veal, about 2” in length
¾ C all-purpose flour, spread on a plate or on waxed paper
1C dry white wine
1 ½ C Homemade Beef Broth. If using canned, do not add salt!
¼ t dried thyme
4 leaves fresh basil
2 bay leaves (One for each of us to find in our meal)
3 sprigs parsley
6 twists of the mill ground pepper
Salt, if necessary (I did not find it necessary and Jim did not add any)
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Choose a heavy casserole with a tight-fitting lid that is just large enough to contain the veal pieces in a single layer. ( I used my Staub pot shaped like a chicken. Filled, it was so heavy Jim had to lift it in and out of the oven.) If you need two skillets, use an extra T of butter per pot.
3. Put the onions, carrot, celery and butter and cook over medium heat for 8-10 minutes. Add the chopped garlic and lemon peel at the end. Remove from the heat.
4. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Turn the veal in the flour shaking off any excess. When the oil is quite hot, brown the veal on all sides. (Be very careful. We are so used to fat free cooking that I had hot oil everywhere as I lowered in the first piece. ) Also dip and brown immediately as you do not want the flour to become gummy.
5. Place the veal on top of the vegetables.
6. Tip the skillet and draw off nearly all the fat with a spoon. Add the wine and boil briskly for about 3 minutes, scraping up and loosening any browning residue stuck to the pan. Pour over pieces of veal in the casserole.
7. Bring the broth to a simmer, I used the microwave, and pour into the casserole. Add the chopped tomatoes with their juice, the thyme, basil, bay leaves, parsley, and pepper. The broth should come to the top of the veal. If it does not, add more broth. Mine did not so rather than resorting to canned broth; I added my left over Madeira sauce from the Valentine dinner.
8. Bring the contents to a simmer on top of the stove. Cover tightly and place in the lower third of the preheated oven. Cook for about 2 hours, carefully turning and basting the veal pieces every 20 minutes. (I did it at 30 minutes and one hour. After that I left it alone as the veal had shrunk below the sauce.
9. I had to thicken my sauce slightly on top of the stove. I did not make a Gremolada as is traditional. I added the juice of one fresh lemon and felt it really made the sauce sparkle.
I did not follow tradition and made a very plain couscous to serve it on right out of the box. The sauce was straight from heaven. I hope it is good if you made it without the Madeira sauce added. Lidia had a recipe for Ossoboco that sounded very interesting, but it was for a larger group and much more difficult to divide down. Maybe someday I will find a crowd and make hers.  Jim served a Trader Joe's Syruah.  It was good, but I would rather have had a good full bodied Chianti.