Osso Bucco

Osso Bucco is a classical Italian dish from the western Lombard region which includes Milan and the surrounding province. Osso buco, meaning ‘open bone, refers to the big piece of marrow in the middle of the veal shank slice, which helps give the dish its rich taste.

The first time I had Osso Bucco was at La Fontana restaurant in the 1980s, later known as Caffe Norton, in Leichardt - Sydney’s Italian quarter. It was a perfect dish on a cold night - heartwarming, rich and flavoursome without being fatty. It had a dusting of gremolate on top - finely chopped parsley, garlic and lemon zest - adding zing and excitement, making it one of my most memorable meals. It is still among my favourite dishes.

Apart from good quality veal shank, the vital ingredients in Osso Bucco is a strong jellied beef stock, ripe tomatoes and gremolata. I found I had two recipes for it - a classic Cordon Bleu recipe and a ‘white’ version without tomatoes. I prefer adding tomatoes and some cayenne to make it slightly spicy and I brown the onions to give the dish a richer taste and deeper colour:

1. Bring the meat to room temperature. Mix the flour and cayenne and place in plastic bag with the meat and shake until the meat is covered. Heat half the oil in a deep frypan to meadium heat and drop in the butter, add the dry oregano, thyme. Turn up heat fry the meat on both sides until brown and caramelised. Remove and keep warm.

2. Meanwhile add more oil to the fry pan, turn up the heat and fry the sliced onion until brown but not burned. Turn down heat, add the carrots and celery and sauté for about five minutes. Deglace the pan with the white wine and reduce. Plunge the tomatoes in a bowl with boiling water for 1 minute. Squeeze out the seeds, remove seeds and chop roughly. Finely chop garlic.

3. Return meat to the pan and place on top of the vegetable mix, add tomatoes and garlic and the jellied stock. Scatter with parsley and place a bay leaf on top. Cover with a lid, turn the heat to very low and simmer for three to four hours.

4. In the meantime, prepare garlic and parmesan potato mash and gremolata:

5. Peel the potatoes and boil in salted water until they start falling apart. Drain and mash together with butter until smooth in a microwave dish. Add the garlic, parmesan and enough milk to cover the potato mix. Microwave for one minute stir for a creamy, light mixture - add more milk if necessary.

6. Heat four dinner plates. Chop parsley and garlic finely add grated lemon. Put a good spoonful of potato mash in the middle of each plate. Place one or two pieces of osso busso on top. Turn up the heat and reduce the juices in the pan until caramelized. Pour over the meat, dust with gremolata and serve.

Serves four.

New Nordic Cuisine is one of the most exciting culinary developments in Europe right now. Inspired by the quality of the region’s raw materials from beyond the arctic circle, the food is fast gaining recognition in the great restaurants of Europe.

It is not by chance that two-star Michelin graded Noma in Copenhagen is at the top of the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. – up from 3rd place last year and 10th place in 2008. Rene Redzepi, partner and Noma head chef, is food ambassador for the Nordic Council of Ministers’ New Nordic Food program. Last year he won the Chef’s Choice Award, when the head chefs of 50 top restaurants nominated him the best.

Arctic Reaches

New Nordic Food signifies the “purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics” of the Nordic region, according to a manifesto drawn up by some of its top chefs and food professionals, who promote the use raw materials from as far north as the Arctic reaches of Greenland. In a few short years, cold-water fish for instance has taken the gourmet restaurants of France by storm.

Everything I know about cooking I learned on the road while living or travelling abroad.

My first experience was in Paris after leaving high school, when I was perfecting my French at Alliance Francaise. I lived in a starving-poet style garrett in the 17th Arrondissement, near Champs Elysees, for free in return for some light household duties for my landlady - a divorcee and single mother with two teenage children and who was a fashion buyer at the famous Galeries Lafayette department store.

Part of the deal was that I make lunch for her children who used to come home from school for lunch. I thought I would get away with making them sandwiches, but my lack of culinary skills was discovered when I was told to prepare a ’simple steak, frites et salade’.

Shocked to find I did not know how to cook a steak, Madame Cochery took me in hand and I was soon cooking steak to perfection for my two charges.

This simple recipe for four can be expanded and refined as the occasion demands:

1. Dry the steaks on a paper towel, turn them in the olive oil, garlic and pepper and leave out until they have reached room temperature. Straight out of the fridge, the cold steaks will cool down the pan and the steaks will end up stewing instead of the juices sealed in. Add salt just before searing the steaks. Since I cooked my first steak, I have discovered that adding soy sauce really helps bring out the meat flavour.

2. If making pepper steaks, crack the peppercorns beforehand in a mortar or on a wooden board with the bottom of the frypan and cover each side of the steaks with the mixture.

3. Heat a ridged griddle pan (or use a BBQ) on high until smoking hot, add the steaks to the pan - two at the time if the pan is not big enough - and cook for one to two minutes on each side, depending on desired doneness. Place the steaks on heated plates at very low heat in the oven, while preparing the rest of the meal.

4. If making sauce, use a flat pan and deglaze the pan after removing the steaks with red wine or cognac and set it alight, add the cream, stir in the mustard and garlic, season and continue cooking for a scant minute until the sauce thickens. Pour over the steaks.

5. If adding mushrooms, remove stalks and wipe them outside, toss in the olive oil, soy sauce, garlic and pepper before adding them to the pan on their ‘heads’. Leave sizzling until juices start forming inside the cups. Place a mushroom on top of each steak. When cutting into the steak and the mushroom, the mushroom juices will flow and blend with the steak’s juices, making a very rich, flavoursome meal.

6. Alternatively, remove the mushrooms and slice thinly on a cutting board reserving the juices. Make the sauce and add mushrooms and their juices at the end.

Frites

‘Frites’ are simply thin cut chips or better known as French fries. These days, you can get good quality French fries from the supermarket freezer which can be cooked in the oven, following the instructions on the packet.

When making French fries from scratch, use a potato cutter which can quickly turn out fries from one potato at the time. I calculate one medium-size potato per person:

1. Rinse the chips in cold water and dry in a paper towel. This will remove the high glychemic starch which affects diabetes and glucose intolerance. Heat up oil in a chip pan. Test the heat by putting in one of the fries and when the oil immediately starts to froth around the potato, put in the rest of the fries in a chip basket and lower them into the oil, leaving them to fry until just coloured.

2. Lift out the basked, shake off excess oil and leave it resting raised out of the oil while preparing the steaks. Just before serving, plunge the chips back into the oil for a second time and cook until golden. Line a bowl with paper towels to absorb the excess oil, empty the chips in the bowl, sprinkle with salt, shake to distribute the salt, pull out the paper towel, leaving the chips in the bowl and serve.

French Salad

For this simple salad, use  mignonette lettuce or a packet of any mixed green leaf lettuce leaves which blends deliciously with the herby French dressing.

1. Wash the lettuce thoroughly, tear up the mignonette lettuce leaves into bite size pieces and dry on a paper tower or in a salad spinner.

2. Make salad dressing: In a salad bowl mix vinegar and mustard with a fork or small whisk, whisk in salt, pepper and add the oil gradually, whisking until the dressing thickens, add the herbs. Add lettuce leaves to the bowl and toss the salad just before serving.

3. Alternatively, make up several batches of salad dressing, omitting the herbs, and keep in a jar in the fridge and drizzle over salad with the herbs just before serving.

4. Serve with the steak and French fries.

Serves four.