Talk:Ossobuco

Removed from article

The following was removed from the article as a violation of NPOV, What wikipedia is not and because much of it was written in an unencyclopedic manner. It is being kept here so it can be edited to conform to these policies if possible.Viridae^Talk 01:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Osso Bucco is a very easy recipes and like most Italian food, the key is to find the best ingredients – in other words excellent veal. It’s one of the most warmingly satisfying cold weather dishes. The dish comes from Northern Italy, the Lombardy region and most notable are those from Milan, although you can find versions throughout Italy. Some very old recipes don’t use tomatoes (tomatoes only came to Europe after the 16th Century and were used in Italian cooking from the mid 19th century) but my version is from more contemporary recipes where tomato is included.

In Italian, Osso Bucco literally means ‘bone with a hole’ or ‘hollow bones’, so as you would expect this is the main feature of the dish. The traditional recipe uses veal shank sawn in 1-2 inch thicknesses horizontally across the bone so your cut of meat has a ring of marrow-filled bone surrounded by flesh. It’s this marrow cooked in the bone that’s the most luscious part to eat and imparts the rich flavour into the sauce. Many butchers sell beef osso bucco, but frankly I think this produces a ham-fisted (pardon the pun) strong tasting version of it and you should always go for veal, which is of course a smaller piece of meat and has a much more delicate flavour. You can also get veal or beef ossi bucci in supermarkets these days, but my problem with them is that they are too thinly cut – usually about only 1cm – causing the piece to curl up at the edges when you brown them. Go for the thicker cut and it will hold together much more effectively through the cooking process. So snuggle up to your butcher and ask for veal osso bucco cut thickly. 1-2 pieces per person should be an ample serve, 3 if they are small pieces from the thinner end of the shank.

This recipe will provide enough to serve 6 and even if you don't have 6 people it's great heated up the next day.

8-10 ossi bucci seasoned flour (plain flour with salt and pepper added) 1 carrot 1 large stalk of celery 1 onion 2 cloves garlic, crushed 150 mls white wine 400 g can of Italian Roma tomatoes sprig of thyme bay leaf strip of lemon rind Basil or oregano (optional) about 500 mls chicken or veal stock

Prepare the vegetables by finely chopping the onion and cutting the celery and carrot into small dice. In Italian coooking this mix is called a sofritto and this step is important as the finely chopped veges give the sauce its body as texture.

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy based pan to a medium hot temperature. You want to brown the meat but too high a heat will blacken the flour coating. Not good. Dust the meat with the seasoned flour, shake off any excess and fry in batches in the oil until browned, removing them to a plate as you finish each batch.

Turn the heat down a little, add another tablespoon of oil if the pan is looking dry and add the sofritto mixture, stirring to pick up any crusty bits left from browning the meat. Cook stirring occasionally for 5 or so minutes until the veges are starting to wilt but not colour too much. Add the garlic and stir. Add the white wine and cook until the alcohol evaporates - about 3-4 minutes - and add the tomatoes and herbs and lemon rind. Season to taste. Arrange the browned meat back into the sauce in one or two layers. One layer is better. The principle is that you want to simmer the meat undisturbed so the marrow doesn't fall out. If there's not enough sauce to cover the meat add as much of the stock as you need and shake the pan to distribute the sauce.

Cover with a lid and simmer at lowest temp on top of the stove, or place in a 160 C oven fanforced (180C if you don't have a fanforced oven) for 90 minutes - 2 hours until the meat is very tender. It shouldn't dry out, but check it once or twice and if the sauce reduces too much add a little more stock.

When you serve it, lift the meat out gently so as not to lose the marrow in each piece. It's gross I know but I love sucking the marrow out of these bones. It’s a creamy meaty luscious flavour so please give it a go. I have several friends who find the whole marrow thing unpalatable and I always invite them round when I cook this dish because they donate their marrow to me.

Traditionally this is served with Risotto alla Milanese (made with saffron, bone marrow, parmesan and butter), but you can serve it with any risotto, normal rice, pasta, wet polenta, or even mashed potatoes. Garnish with chopped parsley, or to be very authentic a gremolata. Take the zest of half a lemon, 4 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley and a finely chopped garlic clove and chop or mix together. Or throw the three ingredients into a food processor to chop and mix them. This is then sprinkled over by each guest onto their serving at the table.

Don't forget the parmesan.

Copyright violation

The current article contains copyrighted material (a recipe) from a commercial cookbook, copied virtually word for word, without permission from the publisher. Simply attributing the source of the recipe does not constitute permission to republish. Also Wikipedia is not a cookbook and its not necessary to publish recipes here. I'm removing the recipe, please note here if you disagree. Thanks. 76.66.0.97 (talk) 17:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Recipes aren't copyrightable. The most you can do with recipes is keep them a Trade Secret and not publish them.--134.134.139.70 (talk) 19:09, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Text is always subject to copyright. Copying a recipe from a cookbook word for word without permission is infringement. For it to not be subject to copyright, it must be rewritten, and released under a license compatible with Wikipedia's licenses. Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a Cookbook. There are other wikis for that. --KRAPENHOEFFER! TALK 19:14, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Tomato plus gremolata version

I'd like to say that, in Australia, the hybrid version, with tomato and gremolata is not only common, it is the only kind of ossobucco known to most people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.170.130.114 (talk) 02:56, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Tomatoes in Italy

Stated, Milan didn't know about tomatoes til the end of the 19th century...

This is from the tomato page:

"The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692"

And the tomato article is better written, so I tend to trust it. I would find it highly unlikely that from that moment it took 300 years to get to Naples..... Highly unlikely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.247.245.14 (talk) 08:07, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite

I did a major rewrite of the article. Let me know what you think. Lechonero (talk) 01:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Revisions

Hello, Lechonero, I made some rather extensive edits to the article in a variety of areas to better follow WP policy as well as to improve the content. Apparently you disagreed with some or all of these edits (which is fine), but your remedy was a blanket revert, which is not very collegial (cf. WP:ROWN) and not very constructive. Surely there was something in my edits that was worth keeping?

Let me review my changes:

1. Following WP:LEAD, I changed the lead to describe what the dish is before discussing the origin of the name:

   BEFORE: Ossobuco (hollowed bone in Italian) is a dish whose name refers to the large piece of marrow in the center of the veal shank bone. It derives from the phrase osso buco (literally "bone hole") in the Western Lombard dialect because the bone marrow is part of the appeal of the dish.

   AFTER: Ossobuco ('hollow bone') is a Milanese dish of braised, cross-cut veal shanks, flavored with gremolata and often served with risotto alla milanese.

2. I removed some cases where strong judgements of aesthetic value were made (cf. WP:PEA#Puffery and WP:NPOV):
   • ...this relatively tough, yet flavorful cut of meat becomes meltingly tender...
   • ...risotto alla milanese perfectly complements ossobuco in bianco...
   • ...the moister, bolder modern-day version goes better either with polenta or mashed potatoes....

3. I removed some practical, unencyclopedic, advice (cf. WP:NOTMANUAL):

   The shank is a relatively cheap cut of veal which is readily available in most good supermarkets and butcher shops. Better portions include meaty hind-shanks cut from the top of the thigh with a high proportion of meat to bone. Each piece should be about five inches across and one to one-and-a-half inches thick.

4. I added two reliable sources and removed several unreliable, low-quality sources (answers.com and two recipe sites). I did however inadvertently remove the reference to the good diagram of cuts on veal.

5. I corrected some errors:

   It is Clifford Wright, not Write

   In Lombard dialect, the name is oss bus (see sources), not ossobuco.

6. The previous version said the dish "had its origins in a Milanese farmhouse"; but the same source also says "the dish may always have been an invention of an osteria". I included both stories (despite the contradiction).

7. I organized the article into sections.

8. I left in the claim that allspice is a standard ingredient of ossobuco in bianco though out of 13,700 Web hits for ["ossobuco in bianco"], only 176 (many of them copying from Wikipedia) mention allspice; can we find a reliable source for this?

9. I used a more specific category: Category:Cuisine of Lombardy rather than Category:Italian cuisine.

All in all, I went over the whole article, trying to improve it in a variety of ways. And I intended to continue by adding information from Waverley Root and other sources. But you apparently think there is nothing of value in any of these changes, and blanket reverted. May I suggest you review the above changes and explain why you think none of them were improvements?

Thanks, --Macrakis (talk) 22:38, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem was that your edits gutted the article leaving it slightly better than a stub. You may have been following Wikipedia policy but in doing so you made the article worse rather than better. I've seen this happen before which makes me question Wikipedia's editing policies.

I apologize for any factual errors the article may have had. Please feel free to correct the ones you found. Also, I'm aware that the article contains opinions about how ossobuco tastes and what goes well with the dish. However, taste is a difficult thing to prove with cited facts. Therefore, using WP:NPOV as justification for removing this information doesn't make sense to me. Even newspaper journalists don't use this approach when writing about recipes.

I certainly have no problems with you altering this article. I'm always very careful to not engage in WP:OWN. Please make whatever changes you like. I only ask that next time you edit with a lighter hand. Also keep in mind this is a popular dish throughout Western Europe and the US. Therefore I believe Wikipedia's readers deserve better than a stub on this subject. Lechonero (talk) 23:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Lechonero, thanks for your response. It is true that the article was shorter after my edits than before. That is because I removed things like comments on the taste and ideal accompaniments for ossobuco. As I interpret Wikipedia policy (a policy I agree with!), statements like "this cut of meat becomes meltingly tender" and "risotto alla milanese perfectly complements ossobuco" are out of place in an encyclopedia article (even if supported by citations), regardless of how appropriate they might be in a cookbook or gastronomic guide. What I propose to do is restore my version but add back the subjective comments in some way. I do agree that readers deserve a good, full article on the topic, and we'll get there with more research! --Macrakis (talk) 23:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Macrakis, thanks for making an effort to compromise with me. Many editors wouldn't do that. I forgot to mention one thing, however. There is no conflict on the information regarding the orgins of ossobuco. Read the article carfully and you'll see I said that ossobuco originated in a farmhouse and then was popularized in osterie. I hope that helps. Lechonero (talk) 23:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've tried to merge the versions while toning down the unencyclopedic language (e.g. "meltingly tender"). About some specific points:

• The cited source (Wright) says first "This famous dish probably had its origins in a farmhouse during the late nineteenth century... It came into its own in the many osterie of Milan" but then later adds "the dish may always have been an invention of an osteria". I would like to find a better source than Wright, but that's what we have so far.
• In general, I would like to find better sources. Specific recipes are not a good way to characterise a dish in general, because each recipe will have its own refinements and innovations. Waverley Root has a bit about this, but not much....

Hope you feed we're moving forward here. --Macrakis (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Your editing style

Macrakis: I made several changes to your most recent version. I still find your approach far too minimalist although I tried to find a middle ground. Also you have a tendency to overuse colons and semicolons. I removed most of them. Lechonero (talk) 00:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm Done

I think I'm done editing this. It looks good to me now. Lechonero (talk) 00:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Photography

The current photo is a very poor example. It looks much more like a mature beef shin than veal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.205.215.250 (talk) 09:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

gremolata optional or obligatory?

hi. the german wikipedia page for gremolata states that it is an obligatory part of ossobuco. certainly there is no law saying that you have to use it, but should it be considered optional or obligatory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.8.230.42 (talk) 13:07, 21 March 2011 (UTC)