Slow pot-roast veal with leeks and white wine

One of the best parts of my chosen career is the way that old friends keep arriving back in Canberra and adding to my circle of friends, enhancing the flavour of the local social stock like herbs thrown into a bubbling soup pot.  The latest arrivals to add zest to the Canberra scene are the Duckworths, who are rejoining the group after three years in Cambodia.   In honour of their return, I decided to have a welcome back dinner - something warming and delicious given the newly-chilly autumnal weather.

I had a deboned, rolled shoulder of veal in the freezer, care of my wonderful mother, and decided a slow pot roast was the way to go.  It's a fabulous cut of veal and is traditionally slow roasted in wine by Italian families the world over.  This was a bit of a last minute decision, so it was lucky that in my travels to the Farmers' Market that morning I had purchased a bunch of small leeks, fresh herbs and button mushrooms, all of which complemented the veal and ended up as the base of the pot roast.

We were also very lucky to have the delightful Ms C at dinner, who whipped up a delicious dessert of meringue nests, whipped cream and blueberries, all drizzled with home-made lemon curd (incidentally, she also gave me the "goddess of hunting" spice mix used in the pot roast from her recent trip to Melbourne).  It was a lovely night, with the food complementing the excellent company.


Slow pot-roast veal with leeks and white wine

Ingredients

- 1 kg deboned & rolled veal shoulder
- 6 button mushrooms (Swiss Brown mushrooms would also be excellent)
- 4 medium-sized leeks, finely sliced
- 1 garlic clove, crushed with the back of a knife and then diced
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage leaves
- 1 teaspoon chopped rosemary leaves
- 1 bottle full-bodied dry white wine (750 ml)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 cup stock (vegetable, veal, beef or chicken, I am not fussy)
- 1 tablespoon "goddess of hunting" spice mix*
- 1 tablespoon porcini powder*

* These ingredients can be exchanged for the following:
-  1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-  1/2 teaspoon ground juniper berries
-  1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
-  1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
-  5 dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in 2 cups boiling water (use the water - strained - instead of the stock as well)

Heat your olive oil in a cast iron casserole pot over a medium-high heat, then brown the veal shoulder on all sides.   Remove and set aside.  Add the butter and, when melted, soften your leeks (with a pinch of salt), but do not let brown.  Add the garlic, chopped sage and rosemary, porcini powder and spice mix (or equivalent ground spices if these ingredients are not available).  Stir until combined and aromatic.  Add in the button mushrooms (and the reconstituted porcinis, if you are not able to find porcini powder).

Pour in 1 cup of white wine, stir and scrape off the yummy brown bits at the bottom of the casserole dish left from the browning of the meat.  This process is called deglazing and your wine should bubble and sizzle.  Pop the browned veal on top when the sizzling ceases, then add the rest of the wine and around 1 cup stock.  This shouldn't completely cover the veal, but should come up to the 2/3 high mark.  When the liquid has heated up, reduce the heat so the broth is at a slow simmer.  Place the lid back on the casserole dish and leave for approximately 2 hours, checking every half hour or so, and turning the meat in the pot so the veal stays moist as it cooks.

At the 2 hour mark, remove the veal from the pot and rest in another dish, covered in foil.  Meanwhile, increase the heat in the pot so that the remaining liquid reduces down by half - this should take about 5-10 minutes.  Finally, add in salt to taste and the thickened cream.  Stir, taste, and add in more salt and porcini powder if it's tasting a little bland.  I also added a small amount of truffle mash, which you can get for a bit of an outrageous sum from the Essential Ingredient.  Well worth it, if you ask me, but the sauce will still taste amazing, even without it.

Now, carve your veal into slices.  The veal was so amazingly tender that it almost shredded apart as I cut it.  I placed the pieces on a large serving dish and then ladled the sauce over the top.  I served it with mashed Dutch Cream potatoes and steamed butter beans fresh from the market.  It was truly one of the most delicious meals I have ever cooked (even if I do say so myself).  Not only that, it was super duper easy, and I was able to sit back and have a drink with my friends, rather than phaffing about in the kitchen.

One rolled shoulder of veal.  One bottle of wine.  Leeks and onions braised in butter, garlic and herbs.  Two hours.  An excellent investment.

Truffled broad bean and mushroom soup

Last weekend I had a few friends around to my place for dinner and whipped up some Guinness and Chocolate Ice Cream for dessert.  But to start the meal I decided a small bowl of soup was in order, made with the last of the broad beans in my freezer.

Now, when you have a boyfriend who, along with some of his mates, has a very large organic vegetable patch (this is not a euphemism) you will eventually have to find a use for a large amount of broad beans.  Apparently putting nitrogen in the soil is something broad beans do very well.  I personally think they make a seriously good soup, amongst other things.  They also freeze up nicely.

The resulting soup recipe originally came about at the height of broad bean season and was a hit at a birthday dinner I put on not long ago.  But it was a new and improved version of the recipe debuted at this weekend's dinner party, which was greatly improved through the addition of some Swiss Brown mushrooms.  I served it in a few of my (formerly) unused and neglected ramekins with a small crouton with a smear of duck pate on the side.

Truffled broad bean and mushroom soup

Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups broad beans (taken out of the pods so they look like Jack's giant beans)
- 4 cups vegetable stock (tetra packs are just fine)
- 1 large spring/new onion (or a brown onion but the spring onions are sweeter)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms (Swiss Brown if you have them, but no worries if not)
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley and chives
- 2 tablespoons butter (I love salted, but whatever floats your boat)
- 1 tablespoon truffle sauce (see picture below)
- 1/2 cup white wine
-  salt to taste

This stuff is the secret ingredient for this soup.  It's an okay cream of broad bean soup without it, but with the truffle sauce, this is amazingly good.  You can get this "special sauce" - which I think of as a mushroom-and-truffle mush - from Essential Ingredient.  Alternatively, just drizzle in some truffle oil just before serving this tasty dish.

So, to start.  Throw your broad beans, whether frozen or fresh, into a saucepan of boiling water and leave them there until they start to look "pruney" like your fingers after a long bath.  Drain them in a colander and run them under cold water to stop the cooking process and make them easier to pull out of their bitter outer skin.  Put on a nice movie or a TV show where you can see it (this is a bit of a boring task) and then pull the inner, sweet green beans out of the darker, greyish shell.  Throw away the outer shells and get working on the base of the soup.

Dice your onion (onions plural if they are smaller) and garlic - I really like the freshly harvested "spring" onions that are on sale at the markets at the moment.  These are the ones that haven't dried out in storage and come attached to their green stalks (which you can happily chop up and add along with the juice, fresh onion).  Now, melt your butter in the bottom of a large saucepan and then throw the onion and garlic in to soften.  When they start to look translucent - but before they start browning - pop in your sliced mushrooms and stir while all the ingredients cook down and the mushrooms start to shrink a little bit.   Add your broad beans until warmed through and, finally, your chopped herbs.   Throw in the white wine on top and stir while it steams and bubbles and then settles down into an even simmer.

Pour your stock on top and let this base simmer until it has reduced by about a third.  At this point, allow the soup to cool a little and then blend it with a Bamix (stick blender) until it is smooth and creamy.  Then, when you are ready to serve, heat up again and add your cream, the truffle mush (ahem, sauce) and salt to taste (truffle salt, if you have it.  I'm not joking, this stuff is the bomb).  Serve immediately.

The recipe as described serves 8 if the portion size is small (a small coffee cup-sized portion) or 4 for a more substantial starter.   If you have a ravenous appetite after a hard day slaving over broad beans at the organic vegetable patch, then I would suggest this would serve 2 with thick slices of crusty bread on the side.

Enjoy!