Osso Buco

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osso buco

I thought I’d make the most of what I hoped was the last of the cooler weather and cook up an osso buco. Our butcher sells the pieces of shank quite cheaply and I figured that the leftovers would make a good freezer standby.

I started to look around for recipes and turned first to The Silver Spoon, the Bible of Italian cooking.

This is a very practical book: the recipes are usually brief (sometimes to the point of appearing boring) and I view it as much more of a reference manual than a step by step instruction guide. In this case, it offered two variations on a theme: Milanese osso buco and veal osso buco with peas. Well, no chance of me making anything with peas!

I ended up combining the two recipes to come up with my own version.

Melt some butter and olive oil in a large pan and sauté off a finely chopped onion, two diced carrots and one large clove of garlic (also finely chopped). With the heat medium high, add three pieces of shank (around 1kg worth), dredged in flour, and fry until they start to take on some colour.

Pour in a generous splash of red wine and continue to cook until the wine all but evaporates. Then add 150mL of good quality beef stock, a 400g tin of crushed tomatoes and large slices on the rind of half a lemon.

Reduce the heat, cover with a lid and cook slowly until the meat begins too fall apart (let’s say a good hour or two – this is not a dish for those in a hurry). Once the meat is tender, you may wish to cook for a little longer with the lid off to thicken the gravy.

When you’re ready to serve, stir through a simple gremolata made from the grated rind of half a lemon and a generous half cup or so of chopped parsley.

Serve with your favourite starchy side … we had polenta, made with cream, butter and parmesan cheese (what was in the fridge), but mashed potatoes, risotto or even pasta would do just as well.

Easy AND delicious!

Hendricks Gin

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Disclaimer: Hendricks‘ PR people invited me along to the Courtship Clinic and I received a Hendricks gift bag. I didn’t plan to post about this but had such fun, I couldn’t not!

Over the weekend Hendricks Gin held its final “Refined Courtship Clinic” here in Adelaide. The pop-up clinic had already visited Melbourne, Sydney and Perth and couldn’t have chosen a better weekend to open its doors at the end of Rundle Street.

Pop ups don’t seem to be such a big thing in Adelaide (or is that even Australia?) but Hendricks used this as a very natty piece of promotion. Patrons were lured in with the promise of a complimentary G&T (really, what’s not to like?) and if you were so inclined you could participate in a session where you could learn the language of fans and other hints on etiquette and courting from the Victorian age.

I, however, was quite happy to sit on the lovely red sofa, enjoy my G&T (served in a tea cup, no less – this is a gem of an idea which I plan to exploit in future!) and have a chat with a couple of other patrons.

Hendricks gin is lovely (I am an enthusiastic gin drinker in warm weather). It’s only been available in Australia this year but I had it quite a few times when I lived in England. I don’t want to get too technical, but gin is flavoured by a mix of what is known as ‘botanicals’ (that’s plants and herbs, to you and me). However, for it to be gin, it must be juniper dominant. Hendricks adds the twist of including cucumber and rose in the mix, making it more floral than other gins. At the clinic, the G&T was served with a slice of cucumber and crushed ice (another idea I’ll be appropriating – so much more civilised than cubes!).

Unfortunately, the clinic has finished its journey around Australia. This means you will have to check out Hendricks at your favourite bar, or dive in and splash out on a whole bottle.

Crust Gourmet Pizza – Brighton

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Crust Pizza

Crust Pepperoni Pizza

Disclaimer:  Crust sent me an Ultimate Night In voucher so I could check out their pizzas for myself.

When Crust’s PR people got in touch and asked me if I’d like to try a pizza from one of their three new South Australian pizza bars, I didn’t really have to be asked twice. While I make a lot of pizza from scratch (we’re blessed with a brilliant oven) we actually also order in on a semi regular basis. It really doesn’t feel good to see that written down!

Crust markets itself as gourmet pizza and the first thing I noticed when checking out the menu was the huge variety of pizzas on offer. There are six vegetarian pizzas, there are “healthier choice” pizzas, there are four each of chicken and seafood pizzas and then there are the five Upper Crust pizzas (wagyu and prawn pizza anyone?). So it was quite a good thing I’d downloaded the menu in advance and changed my mind umpteen times before going through the options with Andy.

While I was tempted by the Moroccan Lamb and Sausage Duo options we ended up going for Pepperoni, which makes us sound really boring but it was the closest to what we’d normally order (Mexican), which we thought made for a fairer taste test. Crust’s Pepperoni pizza is not just pepperoni and cheese – it’s pepperoni, Spanish onions, green capsicum, ground beef, olive tapenade and garlic with chilli optional (yes please! in our case), all on a tomato base.

Our voucher also included a salad – not something I’d normally even consider ordering from a pizza bar. I’ve got absolutely no benchmarks here (do other pizza bars even offer salads?) but we chose the Greek salad.

Decision making over and done with, we placed the order and were told it would be ready for collection in 20 minutes (Crust does deliver, but we live outside the delivery zone). The Brighton restaurant gets a massive thumbs up for our food being ready when they said it would be. I arrived, picked up the food and left in one swift manoeuvre.

At home, I was most interested in checking out the salad. It was really good! It came in a cardboard box (which was a plus – salads in plastic boxes are all horrible and sweaty) and the salad dressing came in a sachet for us to add to taste. As someone who (generally) loathes salad dressing, this made me happy. The olives in the salad were good quality but best of all was the feta cheese which was really creamy.

On to the pizza – the first thing I noticed was that the crust was considerably better than on most pizzas (including our regular). It was thin and crispy and not at all soggy or heavy. The pizza wasn’t laden with topping, which I liked – I suspect this helps with the crust and also meant that everything was well cooked and the cheese was starting to bubble and caramelise. I was also impressed that the tomato base was evenly spread out and was not sweet. There was also some good heat to the pizza – it wasn’t overwhelming and there was a bit of debate whether it came from the extra chilli or from the pepperoni itself.

Overall, it was the crust that made the pizza for me. That was absolutely a cut above your standard pizza bar pizza.

The downside to all of this pizza goodness is that the pizzas aren’t cheap – the large pizzas are $21 (seafood $22 and the Upper Crust 15″ rectangular pizzas are $24). The large pizza and salad was definitely enough for the two of us for dinner – this would have set us back $30 which is not bad for two people but if you were particularly hungry (or wanted leftovers) you could easily be spending a lot more. But with all things, you do get what you pay for. So if you fancy a decent pizza, you should give Crust a try.

Crust currently has branches in Brighton, Norwood and Unley. You can check out a review of the Norwood Crust over at d bites. There are better photos too … I’m always too hungry for good photography!

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