Osso buco

Before you start

• a heavy pot with a lid that fits
• about 2h45, and well over two of those are the pot on its own
• ask the butcher for thick shin steaks cut across the bone, with the marrow left in
• kitchen string, if the shins look like coming apart

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 600gveal shin steaks — or beef shin, cut the same way — cheaper and it needs another half hour
• 120gshort-grain rice — arborio, for the saffron risotto that goes underneath
• 20gplain flour
• 20gbutter
• 1 tbspolive oil
• 1onion
• 1carrot
• 2 stickscelery
• 1 tintinned tomatoes
• 500mlstock
• 1 tbspwhite vinegar
• 1 pinchsaffron
• 1lemon
• 1 handfulflat parsley
• 2garlic cloves

Method

9 steps

1. chop · 8m

   The band of membrane round the edge of each steak cut through in three or four places. Left whole it tightens as it cooks and curls the shin into a cup that will not sit flat. A loop of string round each one holds it together.

2. fold · 3m

   Steaks salted and turned through the flour, then shaken off. The flour is there to brown and to thicken the sauce later, not to coat them.

3. fry · 12m

   Browned hard in the butter and oil on both sides and lifted out. This is where the colour of the finished sauce comes from, so it wants to be properly dark rather than beige.

4. fry · 12m

   Onion, carrot and celery diced small and softened in the same fat until sweet, everything stuck to the bottom scraped up.

5. finish · 4m

   Vinegar in and let bubble away to nothing, then the tomatoes and enough stock to come two-thirds up the meat. Shins settled back in in one layer.

6. simmer · 2 hours walk away

   Lid on, the barest tremble, on the hob or in a low oven. It is ready when a spoon goes through the meat without argument and the marrow has softened in the bone. Two hours is usually right and it is never worth rushing.

7. simmer · 22m

   Risotto alongside near the end: saffron steeped in a little hot stock, rice toasted in butter, then the rest of the stock a ladle at a time, HOT, until creamy.

8. chop · 4m

   Gremolata: lemon zest, parsley and garlic chopped together on the board until they are one green rubble.

9. finish · 4m

   String off, shins onto the risotto with the sauce spooned over, gremolata scattered raw at the last second. It is not a garnish — it is the sharp green thing that stops two hours of braise tasting heavy. A small spoon for the marrow.