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Michelle

Osso Bucco - Back to Basics 17

I love Osso Bucco, having done most of my training in Italian restaurants, it calls to my roots. This is the perfect dish for cold winter nights, delicious, filling and nutritious.


The traditional accompaniment to Osso Bucco is pasta, but I can’t eat pasta, so I made a nice mash of potato, sweet potato and pumpkin, you can pair it with whatever you like and it will be gorgeous.


Ingredients

1.5 kg Osso Bucco (beef shin)

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 carrots, quartered and sliced

3 celery sticks, sliced

2 brown onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic

1 1/2 cups red wine

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary and thyme

zest of one lemon

3 x 400g cans diced tomato

4 cups water

20 pitted black olives, sliced across ways

20 pitted green olives, sliced across ways

300g button mushrooms, quartered

2 teaspoons tapioca starch

1 teaspoon of salt

2 big handfuls baby spinach


Brown your beef shin in a frying pan in your olive oil, use a medium high heat, you want some nice colour here, but we don’t want the beef cooked through, like this -


Transfer the beef shin to a large pot and pop your onion, celery and carrot into the frying pan, turn the heat down a little, but we want some good colour here too, like this-


Add your garlic and herbs, cook for two more minutes then tip this in on top of your beef shin, now stop a minute, let’s have a look at this frying pan -


Remember when we made our gravy? How we talked about this residue on the pan being our flavour? We want this, tip your red wine in to the pan and boil it for a minute or two, then scrape the bottom of the pan, add it to your pot. Tip in the tinned tomatoes and water, bring all of that to the boil, reduce heat, simmer for at least four hours until the meat is tender and falling away from the bone, like this -


Add your olives and mushrooms, simmer for another twenty minutes, or until your mash or pasta is cooked. Dissolve your tapioca starch in a little water and stir that in, stirring all the while, add a little more if you want it a little thicker, we want a nice saucy consistency. Remove from heat, stir in the salt (I know, we rarely use salt in the Cookie House, but this really does need a little) and the baby spinach.


Serve with your mash or pasta, top with a little Parmesan if you can eat cheese, a nice grind of pepper and wa-la - Bellissimo!


As you can imagine, this makes quite a lot, about three and a half litres in fact, so you are going to be good for dinners for the rest of the week. I chose to make extra mash and made a dozen little hot pots in my ramekins for the freezer, they are so easy to just pull out and pop in the oven on those nights you don’t want to cook, and getting a take away is not so easy for those of us with food intolerances, so anything that keeps us from temptation is a blessing. One of my most favourite things, I hope you enjoy it.

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