Bone With a Hole

Winter brings on a craving for stews. Meaty stews. All vegan experimentation aside, I do like a rich, weighty piece of meat every once in a while, and there’s nothing like the smell of a slow-cooked pot of meat and vegetables to make the house seem cozy, homey, and the perfect place to be on a windy winter-like day like today.

In keeping with my proclivity for naturally raised, grass fed meats, the stew I made recently was from local, grass-fed bison. I bought it from a bundled up young woman at the Gunpowder Bison and Trading stand at the Takoma Park Farmers Market, where the farmers were sporting bright red cheeks in the wintery wind on Sunday, and using those mittens that fold over fingerless gloves, to give you alternating warmth and enough agility to handle coins and bills from their customers. Farmers Market gloves.

Instead of the chunks of bison she was selling for $10 a pound, the woman behind the folding table guided me instead toward the cheaper stew option: $1.50 a piece for chunks of bone with some meat still clinging to them. These were called “osso bucco,” which I thought was a fancy dish. It is, kind of. Here’s the definition from my food encyclopedia (one of my favorite books ever, The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques L. Rolland and Carl Sherman): “braised shank, usually veal [not this time!] with a rich tomato-and-onion sauce, originally from Milan. Italian for “bone with a hole,” from the Latin os, meaning “bone.”

So this was definitely “bone with a hole.” But how much meat was really on those bones? The farmer first suggested they’d make a great stock, then assured me if I bought six of them, it would be the equivalent amount of meat to the package of chunks, so I decided to give them a try. I plunked down $8 for 6 packages frozen like rocks. I brought them home and left them on the counter (well away from where the dog could reach them!), then realized I wouldn’t have time for the slow-cooked stew I wanted to make, so I put them in the frig until the next day.

I’d looked for a good beef stew recipe, but not very thoroughly. The one in Jamie Oliver’s book, for Jool’s favorite beef stew, became a loose model for me: he cooks it for 3 to 4 hours in the oven, and I took my timing cue from him. This also allowed me to leave the stew in the oven while I went to dance class (probably not the best idea, if you asked the fire department, maybe I’ll do the crock pot next time).

The girl at the market recommended dredging the meat in flour, then browning before cooking. I liked this idea, it seemed like it would make the whole enterprise more substantial, so I followed that advice but added salt, pepper and thyme to the flour. Jamie Oliver uses cubed squash and Jerusalem artichokes, but I didn’t want to take the time to peel the hard-skinned acorn squash I have and I didn’t have any Jerusalem artichokes, so I went with the traditional carrots, onions and potatoes, hoping they’d be sufficiently flavored by the end of 3 hours in the oven. And they were, the carrots brilliant orange and sweet, the potatoes—also from the farmer’s market—becoming little pillows of buttery flavor. I also threw in whole, peeled cloves of garlic – apparently I have a reputation among Clara’s school friends for throwing whole garlics into my roasted veggies (and giving her leftovers for lunch), so I figured I’d continue the trend and use whole cloves in the stew. I was glad I did: they became soft little bursts of flavor in the finished dish.

Bison is leaner than beef so I was apprehensive about it getting dried out. Not to worry. I also thought the absence of red wine in the broth would make it less hearty – again, I needn’t have worried. The only possible problem with this dish was that my Dutch often ALMOST didn’t hold it, since some of the bones were so big. But it all fit in, and I had a feast when I got home from dance class.

Ginny's Bison Stew
6 osso buco bison bones
about 2/3 cup flour seasoned with 1/4 teaspoon thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 onions, chopped
4 carrots, chopped and sliced (peel 'em)
2 potatoes, chopped (no need to peel 'em)
thyme to taste
sage to taste
5 cloves garlic, peeled but not chopped
1 quart plus 1 cup vegetable broth

Dredge meat in flour mixture and brown lightly in olive oil heated in crock pot. Remove meat, saute onions in the same pot. Add vegetables, meat, broth and herbs and bring to a boil. Cover and put in preheated 300 degree oven. Cook 3 to 4 hours, until meat is falling off the bone.