Category: veal

Categories
apples basil feta food polenta spring onion tomato veal

gorditas with apple salsa

gorditas with apple salsa, feta and veal

I’d heard about these gorditas (“little fat girls”) ages and ages ago and then forgot all about them. I was recently reminded they exist and decided to make them straight away. They are little cornmeal pancakes that you can use to top with anything, but with some leftover veal from Farmers Choice to use up I went for a fruity, sharp salsa and a salty feta for a really zingy combo. This is one of those recipes you can dump pretty much everything from, the key part is the gorditas themselves – tasty little breads you can use for a canape, starter or main course as I did here!

Gorditas with apple salsa (makes 16 pancakes):

250g polenta

250g plain flour

1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

700ml hot water

200g cooked veal, sliced

200g feta, diced

For the salsa:

1 apple, finely diced

3 tomatoes, peeled and diced

4 spring onions, sliced

1 teaspoon hot sauce

Red wine vinegar

  1. Mix the flours and baking powder together in a bowl with a pinch of salt. Gradually add the hot water until the dough comes together. Split into 16 and squash into small discs. Dust with flour and put aside while you make the salsa.
  2. For the salsa mix together all the ingredients and balance with salt, sugar, vinegar and hot sauce until you get a lovely tang.
  3. To cook the gorditas get a frying pan very hot and with a dash of oil cook them on both sides until puffed up. Serve with the veal, feta and salsa. If you have some a little shredded coriander would be great too.
Categories
food marsala veal

roast rose veal

I’ve lamented far too many times on this blog how difficult veal is to get at a decent price, it’s just not even a discussion point any more. So bravo Farmer’s Choice for pushing their rose veal back to the top of the menu. Here’s some photos of their farm.

I’d never roasted veal before. Rare enough as a steak or escalope, I’d never seen a chunk of veal the length of my arm. I wasn’t quite sure where to start, which meant I just had to relax and follow my roasting instincts. After all we are talking about baby roast beef here but with a lighter touch, so I headed off in a faintly mediterranean direction instead, massaging it with plenty of garlic, lemon and basil. Roasting high then low I waited until it was in the high sixties when probed. I was not disappointed with it. Just look at the colour of it, a vibrant pink (rose!) and a texture to die for, loose and luscious.

It may be on the pricier side at £19.60 for 1.4kg but it’s all meat – despite not having the bone in this is a joint packed with flavour. And it went round four meals feeding 3-4 people each time. So in the best tradition of Sunday roasts the main dinner kept on giving. Here’s to veal making a serious comeback!

Farmer’s Choice sent me this complimentary meat to try.

Roast rose veal and Marsala gravy (serves 4 with miles of leftovers):

1.4kg roasting joint veal

6 cloves garlic, peeled

Zest of ½ lemon, finely grated

Handful of basil, stalks and all

1 onion, halved

2 carrots, halved

For the gravy:

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

50ml Marsala

500ml beef stock

  1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Pop the onion and carrot in a large roasting tray and arrange in a line to act as a trestle for the meat. In a pestle and mortar bash up the garlic, lemon and basil with salt and pepper and add enough oil to make a slushy paste. Slather this all over the joint and pop on top of the veg. Put in the oven and after 10 minutes turn down to 160°C. Roast the veal for 1½ – 2 hours until the internal temperature reaches 65°C in the thickest part (use a meat thermometer). Leave out of the oven to rest, covered, for around 30 mins.
  2. To make the gravy, remove the roasted onion halves from the tray, discard the skin and roughly chop. Add to a separate saucepan with the soy sauce and vinegar. Heat until they sizzle then add the beef stock. Bring this up as hot as it will go and reduce by about a third. Meanwhile put the roasting tray on the hob over a high heat and add the Marsala. Allow to bubble and scrape away for a minute or two. Put a sieve over your reducing stock and tip the contents of the roasting tray into the sieve. Discard all the carroty bits and keep on simmering the gravy. You may need to add salt, pepper or sugar as required. Keep reducing until it coats the back of a spoon.
  3. Carve the veal, tip the resting juices into your gravy and serve in thick slices with potatoes and greens.
Categories
food marsala potatoes stock veal

veal escalopes in marsala sauce

I really like veal, but it’s always been so hard for me to get. You might find a tiny Dutch scrap in a supermarket, and my experiences with local butchers have been frankly embarrassing. Farmer’s Choice recently sent me some veal to try out and I wasn’t disappointed. It was tender and savoury, with a wonderful loose texture.

I’ve paired it here with a classic ingredient: Marsala wine. I keep a bottle in my cupboard permanently, and it lasts me about a year. It’s perfect in sweet and savoury dishes where you need a smooth, sweet flavour. It enhances the sweetness of the meat and makes a great combination.

Farmer’s Choice rosé veal is available from their site.

Veal escalopes in marsala sauce with garlic new potatoes and broccoli (serves 2):

250g baby new potatoes, sliced in half

20g butter

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2 rosemary sprigs, leaves picked and finely chopped

1 small head of brocoli

250g veal escalope

Flour

4 tablespoons Marsala

300ml chicken stock

  1. Preheat the oven to 100°C. Get a large pan of water on to boil, add the potatoes, and cook until a knife passes into it easily. Drain them off while you get a frying pan over a high heat.
  2. Add a good splash of oil to the frying pan and add the drained potatoes cut side down. Cook for about 10 mins or until they brown on the underside. Drain off the excess oil, then turn off the heat and toss the potatoes in half the butter, the garlic and rosemary with a pinch of salt. When they are well coated transfer to an oven dish and keep warm in the oven to allow the garlic to cook very gently while everything else happens.
  3. Get the broccoli into some more boiling water and cook until cooked to your liking.
  4. Dust the veal in a little flour and season with salt and pepper. In the same pan you cooked the potatoes in, fry the veal on a high heat for 1 minute on each side, then put aside to rest. Deglaze the pan with the Marsala, then add the stock and boil as rapidly as you can until the sauce is reduced and syrupy. Whisk in the remaining butter, check for seasoning and add the veal for 1 more minute’s cooking time to warm through and finish cooking. Serve with the potatoes and broccoli.
Categories
courgettes polenta prosciutto sage turkey veal

saltimbocca with courgette fries

This post is dedicated to Laissez Fare.

Twitter friend and all-round good egg Laissez Fare was upping sticks and moving back to his homeland, USA. He was throwing a party but wouldn’t you know it, it was during my only week’s holiday of the year. So we managed to arrange a separate lunch where we could chat, eat and give him a little send-off. Using his wiles he’d booked us a table at the titchy-but-perfectly-formed Polpetto.

We had a lovely meal and sampled many dishes – including a £7.50 sandwich I couldn’t ignore. Ironically the disappointment was the polpetti, which tasted only of the fennel marinade they were in. However lots of them were top drawer, such as the pigeon saltimbocca cooked to a perfect purple-pink with fragrant sage, and finely-sliced zucchini fries with a light tempura-style crunch. I enjoyed these so much I attempted to recreate them later that week at home.

I happened to have some turkey and veal hanging around the freezer so chose those over the pigeon version, and made one each of those. They were great, yet surprisingly the turkey version was more interesting than the veal. And the courgette fries were equally tasty. I had the oil a touch too hot at the start, but once it calmed down the fries were much more consistent. I was very pleased with the results.

If you’re in the Leicester Square area, forego those touristy places and try to grab a seat at Polpetto – tasty food, kind and informal service and very reasonable prices. +1 for the non-matching crockery too.

Saltimbocca with courgette fries:

For the saltimbocca:

4 breasts of turkey or veal

4 slices of prosciutto

4 sage leaves

100ml beef stock

For the fries:

2 courgettes, diced to approx 4mm matchsticks

100g plain flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon honey

200ml carbonated water

Vegetable oil (or similar) for deep-frying

  1. First make the batter. Stir the flour, baking powder and honey together with a pinch of sugar and whisk in the water. Clingfilm and pop in the fridge for half an hour. (This will ‘set’ the batter and hold the bubbles in place).
  2. Place the breasts between two pieces of clingfilm and pound until it’s about half a centimetre thick. Discard the clingfilm, place a sage leaf on each breast, season and wrap in a slice of prosciutto.
  3. Get a frying pan to a medium heat and add a little oil. Fry the saltimbocca for 7 – 8 minutes until cooked through, and put to one side to rest. Add the stock to the pan and boil hard to reduce and get the good stuff off the pan.
  4. Bring enough oil to fill 2/3 of a pan to 190°C. Dip the courgette in the batter, shake off the excess and deep-fry in batches. They will only take 45 seconds – 1 minute to cook and turn light brown. Put to kitchen paper to drain and toss over some sea salt.
  5. Serve the saltimbocca on soft polenta, pouring the pan juice / stock over.
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