Of all the veal dishes we cook, this is probably the easiest. The preparation time is short, the method is simple and it doesn’t take long to achieve a delicious result.

The only tricky bit is acquiring the correct cut of veal. Many butchers sell veal shanks, for slow braising, and veal escallops, for making schnitzel and veal parmigiana. Far fewer offer other cuts of veal on a regular basis. Once you find a butcher that sells a wide variety of cuts of veal, you still have to make sure that you are given the correct meat for this recipe.

I call them ‘cutlets’ because, as is the case with lamb cutlets, they are cut from a ‘rack’. But, at some butchers, they might be called ‘chops’ or they might only be available as a rack. (In the latter case, it is ridiculously easy to divide the rack into cutlets with a sharp, straight-edged knife, as Maggie is always happy to do.) In fact, our preferred supplier of veal uses the term ‘cutlets’ for the cut we use to make our veal chops Dijonnaise, even though it looks more like a t-bone than a cutlet.

Anyway, once you have your cutlets, the rest is a doddle, as follows.

Ingredients

4-6 veal cutlets
15ml olive oil
15g butter
leaves from a rosemary sprig, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
¼ cup dry white wine
1 tbsp tawny port or Madeira
½ cup veal stock
4 kipfler potatoes, cut into 1cm pieces
8-10 Swiss Brown button mushrooms, cut into 2-3mm slices
salt and pepper

Method

1. Heat oil and butter over medium heat in a flameproof casserole that will hold all the ingredients snugly. Seal the cutlets well, then add garlic and rosemary and allow them to sizzle for a minute.
2. Add wines and let the liquid bubble for a minute, then add the stock and mushrooms. Bring liquid back to the boil.
3. Place lid on the casserole and transfer it to an oven pre-heated to 150C. Bake for about 60 minutes or until the meat is falling-off-the-bone tender. Add the potato pieces after the first 30 minutes of baking.
4. How easy was that?