Bone Mouths

Tonight was all about trying to recreate a pasta dish I had when visiting Simon in Vancouver, the Osso Bucco Fettuccine at La Notte. As I mentioned in that write-up, the pasta and meat were great, but the sauce was really lacking. I have now totally switched butchers after discovering one closer to me with a better selection and friendlier staff. They have a full selection of veal where my other butcher had none whatsoever, which is partially what inspired me to try this out now. This was also a test to see whether or not Shannon likes veal, since she was previously turned off by the Rigatoni I made with ground veal in the meat sauce. Personally, I think that's an award winning touch, but I guess we all don't like the same things unfortunately.

I picked up two veal shanks, which to me just seem like such "cheffy" cuts of meat to buy. They were pricier than most meat I buy, but they're so delicious I didn't particularly care. I also picked up some veal bones and made my own veal stock. I was very committed to this dish! It may only be a single recipe entry, but it sure dirtied enough dishes and took long enough to prepare. All of these things, like fresh pasta and stock, could easily be picked up at the grocery store, of course.

I made this batch of fresh pasta with egg and flour alone. Without adding water, a single egg seems to make a decent entree serving of pasta with however much flour it can absorb. So 2 eggs plus however much flour was more than enough for Shannon and myself. I think I like the texture better with water and yolks alone, because with whole eggs the pasta taste like, well, egg noodles. Lesson learned.

Since the shanks had to be slow-cooked, I was starving by the time dinner time rolled around. This was probably a bad thing, because I scarfed down my entire plate of food and consequently felt bloated for the next 3 days. This is one of the benefits of being behind in updating the site is that I'm aware of these things, I guess. It was way too much for one person. I mean, look at the size of those shanks? I'm not able to handle that much food.

My only real complaint about the dinner is that I used some leftover red wine instead of white, which overshadowed the flavor of the veal. Shannon really enjoyed that part of it though, since she wasn't particularly in favor of the flavor of veal that she remembered. I would definitely go the white wine route if I were to make this again. I was also happy to get good use out of my dutch oven that has been somewhat neglected since I picked it up.