By Honor Northam

I’ve been sharing the cakes I bake for the Dissenters Lounge in the Once in a While newsletter that you can subscribe to via the Dissenters Lounge website. Now that the café space is also the Honorbread Lounge, you’re welcome to bring your Honorbread coffee, cake and other purchases inside to enjoy in comfort, but we won’t be serving coffee and cake from the Lounge itself.

I’ll keep writing up the recipes I’m developing for the bakery – and for my own family – so if you like cooking with what’s seasonal or just want someone else to test a recipe first, you can subscribe and keep up to date with what’s going on at the Lounge and maybe have some baking inspiration too.

Recipe

This is a recipe that Tim and I both contributed to because I gave him a recipe and he did his own thing which is often how we work. I wanted to use quinces because they are one of the very best taste sensations of the autumn and I happen to have a few. I wanted lamb shanks and sent Tim to the butcher, and he came out with veal (are you starting to see a pattern here?). So here is what we cooked for a celebration dinner this week – slowbraised veal shank with quinces, onions and soft vegetables – rich, comforting and perfect with mashed potatoes, polenta or crusty bread.

Ingredients

6 cross-cut slices of veal shank (about 1.5 kg total)
4 g fine salt
20 g plain flour
50 g olive oil (30 g for browning, 20 g for vegetables)
900 g quinces (about 3-4), rubbed clean to remove the fuzz
200 g red onions, peeled
100 g carrots, diced into 1 cm cubes
100 g celery, diced into cm 1 cm cubes
300 mls/g dry vermouth (or white wine)
450 mls/g chicken stock
1 sprig sage (or a few leaves)
½ bay leaf
1 whole clove
2 g whole black peppercorns
Extra salt, to taste

To serve: mashed potatoes, soft polenta or crusty bread.

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180 °C (no fan). Pat the slices of veal shanks dry and make a few small, vertical cuts in the outer membrane so they don’t curl.
2. Season the shanks with the salt, then dust lightly with the flour, shaking off any excess.
3. Heat 30 g olive oil in a large, heavy, ovenproof pot over medium-high heat. Brown the shanks for about two minutes on each side until well coloured. Remove the meat and set aside.
4. Rub the quinces with a cloth to remove any fuzz, then cut into quarters and remove the cores. Cut half the quince into 1 cm slices and leave the rest as quarters.
5. Peel the red onions and cut them into quarters. Dice the carrots and celery into 1 cm pieces.
6. Add the remaining 20 g olive oil to the same pot and reduce the heat to medium. Add the onions, carrots, celery and all the quince pieces. Sauté for about three minutes, stirring, until they just start to colour.
7. Pour in the vermouth and simmer until almost completely reduced. Add the chicken stock, sage, bay leaf, clove and peppercorns. Bring just to the boil, then reduce the heat.
8. Return the browned veal shanks and any juices to the pot, nestling them into the quince and vegetables. Cover with a lid.
9. Place the pot in the lower half of the oven and braise for about one hour. Carefully turn the shanks, cover again and braise for another hour, or until the meat is very tender and the quince is soft.
10. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning with a little extra salt if needed. Serve the ossobuco with the quince, onions and vegetables spooned over the top, with mashed potatoes, polenta or crusty bread to soak up the juices.

Photo: Honor Northam