Ossobuco alla milanese

Cross-cut veal shin, braised slowly until the meat gives way, finished with gremolata: lemon zest, garlic and parsley, chopped fine and scattered on at the last moment.

The name means bone with a hole, and the hole is the point. The marrow inside softens as the shin cooks and is eaten with a small spoon or pushed out onto the bread. In Milan there is a narrow spoon made for it.

Ingredients

Serves 4.

	Metric	Imperial
Veal shin, cross-cut 4 cm thick	4 pieces	4 pieces
Butter	50 g	1.75 oz
Onion, chopped fine	1	1
Plain flour	for dusting	for dusting
Dry white wine	200 ml	7 fl oz
Meat or vegetable broth, hot	400 ml	14 fl oz
Salt and pepper	to taste	to taste

Gremolata

	Metric	Imperial
Lemon zest, unwaxed	1 lemon	1 lemon
Garlic	1 clove	1 clove
Flat parsley	a handful	a handful

Ask for the shin cut thick. Thin slices lose their marrow into the pan and the meat dries before the connective tissue has had time to soften.

Tie each piece around its circumference with kitchen string. The muscle groups separate as they cook and the piece falls apart in the pan without it.

Method

1. Snip the membrane around each piece in three or four places so it does not curl, then tie them.
2. Dust with flour and shake off the excess.
3. Melt the butter in a heavy pan wide enough to hold the pieces in one layer. Brown them well on both sides and lift them out.
4. Soften the onion in the same butter over low heat, 10 minutes, without colouring it.
5. Return the meat, pour in the wine, and let it evaporate almost completely.
6. Add hot broth to come about two thirds up the meat. Cover and cook at the barest simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours, turning the pieces every half hour.
7. Chop the gremolata ingredients together as fine as you can.
8. Take the pan off the heat, scatter the gremolata over, cover, and leave it five minutes before serving.

What goes wrong

The meat is dry and the sauce is thin. Cooked too hot. A braise wants the surface barely moving; a rolling simmer squeezes the meat and does not soften the collagen any faster.

The pieces fell apart. Not tied, or cut too thin.

The marrow is gone. It rendered out, usually because the heat was too high at the browning stage or the pieces were cut thin.

The gremolata tastes of nothing. It was added early and cooked. Lemon zest and raw garlic lose their volatility within a minute of heat, which is why this goes on at the end and off the flame.

Why it works

Shin is one of the hardest-working muscles on the animal and is full of collagen. Long slow moist heat converts that collagen to gelatine, which is what makes a braised shin silky rather than merely tender, and it is also why the sauce thickens without anything being added to it.

The gremolata is doing an acid's job without adding liquid. Two hours of butter, veal and marrow is a heavy, fatty plate, and raw lemon zest cuts through it in a way a squeeze of juice cannot, because the aromatic oils are in the peel.

At the table

The classic accompaniment is risotto alla milanese, and the two come on the same plate. That is the exception to the Italian rule that a primo is its own course, and in Milan it is not a liberty a restaurant is taking. Ordering the ossobuco and finding saffron risotto beside it is what is supposed to happen.

Outside Milan you may get it with polenta or with mashed potato, both of which are fine and neither of which is the Milanese dish.

There are two versions and the older one has no tomato. The traditional Milanese ossobuco is made in bianco, with just wine, broth and onion. The version with tomato is a later addition, it is now extremely common, and plenty of Milanese households make it that way. Both are served; the recipe above is the one without, and adding a couple of spoonfuls of passata with the broth gives you the other.

The marrow is not optional and not a garnish. A diner who leaves it has missed the dish, and in company somebody will say so.

It is autumn and winter food, it takes two hours, and it is better reheated the next day.

What an Italian would say

That the gremolata goes on at the end and never cooks. That the marrow is the best part and there is a spoon for it. And that in Milan the risotto is not a side dish, it is half of what you ordered.