Osso Buco

I haven't had anything to blog about recently. One thing I noticed yesterday afternoon, one really bad thing about being single -- I have to take several trips to the car to get all the groceries out. If I had a girlfriend or wife, she would be able to help me lug all that stuff up. (although I suppose that, as as gentleman, I would have to carry all that stuff myself anyway).

My brother helps me with that usually, but he wasn't home this weekend.

Last night I had some Osso Buco. It was store bought, pre-cooked. I cut it out of its plastic bag and was about to just cook it up and eat it. But then I realized that's what the old Brian would, not the new one.

(It's the one at the bottom)

So instead, I looked into my fridge for what else I could do, to improve it. I had a box of mushrooms but that's all. How sad.. so I grabbed my keys and wallet and went downstairs to the Loblaws and bought 3 cooking onions. Onions are surprisingly cheap considering how yummy they can be. 34 cents, what a deal!

I cut the onions, length-wise so that they would come out as thin slices. I heated a pan with oil, and threw the onions in. As I stirred that I sliced up the mushrooms, from top to bottom as usual. On Saturday I was at Chapters (bookstore) and was reading up on how to cook mushrooms and broccoli, two of my favorite vegetables. I scanned them quickly to get a good general feel of the best ways to prepare 'shrooms and broccoli.

As soon as the onions started browning, in went the mushrooms, with some salt. And then as the mushrooms began to soften, I poured about half a cup of red wine, stirred that around. I really like cooking with wine. Actually, I just like wine in general. I had about 1/3 of a bottle on Friday night while watching a movie. Yes, by myself.

Once everything appeared "cooked", I prepared half a couple of beef stock with some corn starch to thicken it up a bit, then poured that in and let the whole thing simmer and flavor up. It was smelling pretty good at this point. I poured that whole mixture into a bowl to let it cool down a bit.

At this point I put the Osso into the pan and cooked it for the 8-10 minutes that was required to heat it up (according to the directions). At the 8 minute mark, I took out the Osso and put it aside, then poured my mushroom/onion mixture into the pan to cook it with the sauce that the Osso Buco had come with. This made it smell totally awesome. The sauce was made with tomatoes and herbs.

I mixed that all up and then poured that back on top of the cooked meat, heated up some rice and served it. To myself. I guess that's another crappy thing about being single. It's enough for two dinners though and I suspect it'll taste even better tonight.

One of these days I'll cook something that tastes absolutely awful and then I'll be stuck eating it all up for a whole week. I'm totally not looking forward to that..