Veal Braised in Chianti

This is a fabulous recipe from Tuscany using a bottle of Chianti in which to very slowly braise Tendron de Veau, which is a perfect cut and which happened to be on offer in our local supermarket. I found a bottle of Chianti Piccini from the co-operative in Castellina-in-Chianti where we stayed some years ago in a wonderful little farm building high in the Tuscan hills.

The slow cooking mellows the amount of freshly ground black pepper included. So, grab the following; and this is for about 3 to 4 persons.

970 gr of veal breast.
half a dozen good cloves of garlic.
1 bottle of Chianti.
2 soup spoons of freshly ground pepper - pepper corns in the coffee grinder!
fresh sea salt, rosemary sprigs and a bay leaf.

Cut up the veal; and with any bones, put them into a heavy based pot like a Le Creuset. Add the other ingredients and pour in the wine - yes, the whole bottle! Bring it to a simmer, cover with a heavy lid making sure the wine covers all the ingredients and place it into a pre-heated oven at 150C... no idea what that is in Gas...

This is the stew just starting to bubble... leave it in the oven for several hours, go and shop, do some work, go for a long walk, and then it will be ready to devour...

I'm going to buy a Romanesco type cauli and do that with some of those funny dark red carrots, and maybe serve with some polenta in separate little pots...

As I type this out and change things about, adding this, editing that, the smell from the oven is just delicious. My mouth is watering so much I have to go out and  play.

I'll let you, my dear reader, know how good it was or even how it was not...

And to drink? Well, I have set aside a Brunello di Montalcino 2002, which is conspicuous by it's absense from Hugh Johnson's 2011 Pocket Wine Book...I hope that won't prove to have been a waste of money in Tuscany several years ago.

Tuesday 20th March...
I ate it again last night. My bum is burning. I had the last portion that couldn't be eaten on Saturday night and which we found, spoiled the wine because it was far too hot. 4 tablespoons of ground black pepper with 2.5 kilos of meat was the recipe's original proposal, and I put 2 soup spoons (slightly less than a tablespoon) into a fraction under 1 kilo of meat, and although it wasn't a vindaloo, it was hotter than the average Italian would want I'm sure. At least we drank most of the wine before we sat down to eat and so only the last mouthful was ruined before we went on to a more robust Côtes du Rhone. 

This must be a misprint in the book.