Meat
Veal
Also called vitello
Meat from a young calf: pale pink, fine-grained and mild. Italian butchers sell it as thin escalopes (fettine) from the leg, and as bone-in rib chops.
Origin
Butchers everywhere; central to Lombard and Roman cooking.
Flavour
Delicate and sweet, much milder than beef, so it takes on butter, sage and wine.
How to use it
Beat escalopes thin between sheets of baking paper and cook them fast in butter. Leave the bone on a rib chop for cotoletta, beat the meat a little flatter, bread it and fry it in butter.
Storage
Refrigerate and cook within two days, or freeze.
Recipes using it
Saltimbocca alla romana
Rome's veal escalopes topped with prosciutto and sage, seared in butter and finished with white wine. They jump into your mouth.
Easy
Cotoletta alla milanese
Milan's bone-in veal chop, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried in clarified butter until golden. Lemon, and nothing else.
Medium
Vitello tonnato
Vitel tonnè
Piedmont's cold veal in tuna sauce: lean veal cooked gently in white wine, sliced thin and covered with a velvety sauce of tuna, anchovy, capers and egg yolk.
Medium
Zürcher Geschnetzeltes
Zurich's sliced veal in a white wine, mushroom and cream sauce, cooked in half an hour and served only ever with rösti.
Medium
Blanquette de veau
Veal simmered white with aromatics, finished in a sauce of its own stock thickened with roux, cream and egg yolk, with mushrooms and small onions.
Medium
