Osso Bucco

I get all our meat from the market, There is one of those guys who auctions it off the side of his lorry, I always thought this was some kind of scam that you would end up with a bag of rotting offal or something but actually we have found him excellent we pay about half the price we would in the supermarket and the meat is better.

Last month I got: A joint of lamb, a joint of beef, a joint of pork, a bag of lamb chops, a bag of sirloin steak, a bag of pork chops, a chicken, a large pack of sausages and a large pack of gammon for £30, enough to feed us for a month.

Anyway, I went again yesterday and in the mixed bag was a packet of Osso Bucco. I had never seen this before and wasn't sure what it was, from the name I thought it might be some kind of African game animal....google revealed a slightly less exotic answer, it is the cross section slices of leg of beef or veal. The slices have a circle of bone in the middle with a lovely big hollow of bone marrow.

It works best stewed so you can get the meaty goodness from the bone marrow, I kept it simple, in a big pan I fried the Osso Bucco for a bit, added loads of onions and browned the lot. I would have added a stock cube but we didn't have any so instead I chucked in some cayenne pepper, dried onion, juniper berries, pepper corns and a splash of so sauce. Then I poured flour over the whole lot and fired for a few seconds then poured a whole bottle of ale over the top and stirred it until all the flour mixed into a thick sauce.

The whole lot then got poured into a pot with a lid, I studded it with hard boiled quails eggs (we put them in everything because the quails lay so many!) and stuck it in the oven for an hour or so until Lizi got home.

We served it with mashed potato it was amazing on a cold rainy day.