Fall, a favorite time of year for The Three Tocayos was interrupted by, believe it or not, Old Man Winter! With trees just beginning to color the landscape with hues of orange and red, we received about 10 inches of snow last weekend. Sadly, there were plenty of downed trees that could not handle the weight of the collected snow on their leaves. This led to many homes losing electrical power and unfortunately we were among the many to go dark.
But there is no snow in the forecast this weekend and we have power, so off to the galley Mario and I went to see what our next creation would be. We agreed on the Osso Buco con Gremolata di Pignoli - Osso Buco with Toasted Pine Nut Gremolata (page 363). Now you may remember back in March we were unable to purchase the veal and replaced it with pork. Although we enjoyed it and gave it four crocs, we knew that we would revisit the recipe with the veal.
The past few weeks we have had the advantage of seeing our Captain prepare his meals on the iPhone/iPad with his Mario Batali Cooks! app. This week we went back to the Molto Italiano cookbook with great confidence that we could pull off another five croc meal. While I seasoned the osso buco with salt and pepper on all sides, Mario chopped the carrots, celery and diced the Spanish onion. We heated up the olive oil in our dutch over and placed the meat inside then browned it on all sides. We were both amazed at how delicious the meat looked as we turned it over. Mario removed the osso buco and set them aside on a plate while I added in the carrots, celery and onion into the dutch oven. We tossed them until they were golden brown and then added in the tomato sauce (only half of what the recipe called for - Mario and I had commented when we made the porko buco that we should have used less sauce) and wine. We brought it up to a boil and added in the browned meat. We covered the dutch oven and placed into our preheated 375° oven for 2 and 1/2 hours.
Mariesa requested a side of risotto and we had to retain the services of our in-house expert - Angela! As the timer on the oven counted down to zero Angela timed the risotto to be ready with the main course. I know we have said this before, but it merits repeating, the house smelled terrific and it was a great compliment to the crisp chill of the air outside.
Ciao,
Mario & Mario
The Three Tocayos
