Veal shoulder in white wine

I used some of the frozen veal from my freezer last night to make dinner. I thought I'd cook the shoulder and then we could have it for leftovers a night or two.

I have never cooked a veal shoulder before and didn't really know what to do with one. A friend of mine told me about "soffrito" which sounds like an italian technique. This basically involves searing it then steaming it. You sear the outside of the meat in oil then put it in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water, the juice of a lemon and some saffron to flavour it.

Sounds lovely and I will no doubt do that one day. Last night however I wanted to make a bit of a stew, as I had some leftover vegetables from the minestrone the other night, and because I thought it would keep better.

The veal shoulder took over a day to defrost and was absolutely massive. There were a number of top ribs attached to the pack labelled shoulder, and having defrosted them thought I might as well cook them. Besides, the more bones in a stew the better especially veal bones, which give an amazing flavour when they cook.

So I seared all the meat in a nice hot pan with a bit of oil. I had to chop it into three pieces to sear it properly.

I then took the meat out, turned the hear right down and fried two onions and four cloves of garlic. You have to be careful when you do this, because the pan is sometimes so hot from searing that it immediately burns the garlic and onions. I normally take the pan off the heat for a few minutes to let it cool down. If you are being time efficient you can chop your onions at this point.

Now was the time for the liquid. Most veal stew recipes I have seen use red wine (and or stock). I think this is a mistake. Veal is a delicate flavour, not robust like meat or (older) lamb. I thought I'd try white wine instead.

I poured half a bottle of white wine over the meat and popped in some carrots we had leftover (rinsed and chopped large). I also added some sprigs of rosemary and thyme from the balcony. The wine didn't even nearly cover the large piece of meat. I am down to my last freezer pack of veal stock and didn't want to waste it on a weeknight dinner but I needed some more fluid - so I decided to reach for (horror of horrors) the stock cube.

Such is the infrequency with which I use these things that we actually didn't have any which were not passed the use by date. Did you realise these actually could go off?? Maybe one of the chemicals in there oxidises over time or something, but they are so inorganic I can't believe any bacteria could actually colonise a stock cube.

Luckily the wife was on the way out and brought a pack back for me. I read the ingredients. Mostly salt, then a load of chemicals I'd never heard of. No sign of any bones as far as I can tell. Still, probably better than just water I figures.

I poured about 1/2 a litre in. I always mix up the stock to about half the strength of what it says on the packet, because the flavour can be a bit nasty.

I then left the veal for a couple of hours simmering to do its stuff.

At the end there was a lot of fluid left so I tried to thicken it. I took the veal out and wrapped it in tin foil, then covered it with a tea towel and left it to rest. I then had a load of fluid with vegetables which I left simmering without the lid on.

I tried to thicken it with plain flour but made a bit of a mess and ended up with lumps. What you need to do is first mix the flour with butter and then add a bit of the fluid from the pan. Mix it well then really beat it into the sauce. I tried that and I got there in the end.

I am always a bit scared about reducing a sauce which contains powdered stock, ultimately you'll just end up with concentrated salt - perhaps salt crystals if you left it long enough. Which is why I was glad I had made the stock weak. I still want to concentrate down the flavours from the wine, the meat and the vegetables. With hindsight I probably didn't really need the stock cube at all.

I put a few frozen peas into the fluid to give it a bit of greenery and then served up after they had cooked. I also served with some new potatoes I had lying around. Plenty of ground black pepper over the veal and sauce.

The result? Pretty good. The meat was nice and tender. Shoulders are a bit fatty though - maybe I should have made the effort to cut some of this out before cooking. The white wine sauce works perfectly with the veal and I was definitely right about that. Rosemary, thyme and garlic all worked really well. There was a bit of a chicken powder taste to the sauce, but all in all it was pretty good.

There's plenty more to eat tonight and probably even tomorrow so I won't have to cook (or blog) for a day or so.