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Rouelle of Veal, Chepolata
Have a three-pound piece sawn from a leg of white, tender veal, and season it all around with a good teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons leaf lard in a round braising pan, add veal, briskly fry on range for ten minutes on each side, take it up and keep on a plate. Add mirepoix to pan, brown it for six minutes, replace veal on top of vegetables, pour in three gills water, two gills each demi-glace and tomato sauce, season with half teaspoon salt, cover pan, boil on range for ten minutes, set in oven for a full hour, remove to oven door and let stand till required. Slit on one side twelve large chestnuts, roast them in oven for thirty minutes, remove, shell and peel, then place in a sautoire. Peel twelve small white onions, brown in a frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter for ten minutes, frequently tossing meanwhile, then add to chestnuts. Cut three country sausages in two crosswise, add to onion pan, briskly cook for two minutes, then add to chestnuts. Strain veal gravy over pan (with chestnuts) let boil for fifteen minutes, dress veal on a large dish, pour contents of pan over and serve.
A leg-of-veal braise finished with the classic chipolata garnish. Nothing here is difficult, but Filippini assumes you keep demi-glace on hand and that you know what a mirepoix is without being told how much to use.
- The hinge: braise low, not boilingAfter the ten minutes on the range the pan should go into a moderate-to-slow oven, about 325F, so the liquid barely trembles. A three-pound rouelle held at a rolling boil for an hour turns stringy; at 325F it slices cleanly and stays moist.
- RouelleA rouelle is a thick round cut straight across the leg, bone in the centre, which is why he says "sawn." Ask the butcher for a 3 lb centre-cut veal leg steak about 2 inches thick, or substitute a tied boneless veal round roast of the same weight.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. So three gills water is 1 1/2 cups, and two gills each of demi-glace and tomato sauce is 1 cup of each, about 3 1/2 cups liquid in all.
- Mirepoix, unquantifiedFilippini gives no amount. For a pan this size use roughly 2 cups total of diced carrot, onion and celery with a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme. The vegetables are a flavour bed and are strained out with the gravy at the end.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole (brown sauce) combined with brown stock and reduced by half, though it is commonly approximated today by heavily reduced brown veal stock; not a supermarket item in this form. A cup of good reduced brown stock, or a commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted per its label, does the work; if you use a salty concentrate, hold back the final half teaspoon of salt until you taste the finished sauce.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the pig's kidneys, prized for being mild and clean-tasting. Ordinary lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil browns the veal just as well.
- ChestnutsScore the flat side, roast at 400F for 25-30 minutes, and peel while hot -- the inner skin welds itself on as they cool. Vacuum-packed peeled chestnuts are a legitimate shortcut, but the recipe's simmer is only fifteen minutes in all, so watch that they do not collapse.
- The sausages"Country sausages" here means small fresh pork links, the chipolata of the garnish name. The two-minute toss in the onion pan only colours them; they finish cooking during the fifteen-minute simmer in the gravy. Check that they have reached 160F before serving.
- "Remove to oven door"A coal-range instruction for a warm holding spot. Modern equivalent: cover and hold in a 175F oven, or leave in the turned-off oven with the door ajar while you finish the garnish.
- YieldSix generous servings. Slice the rouelle across the grain and spoon the chestnuts, onions and sausages over with the strained sauce.
The name is the tell: chipolata is generally traced to the Italian cipollata, an onion dish, and by the nineteenth century French kitchens had fixed it as a standard garniture -- glazed button onions, chestnuts, small pork sausages, sometimes lardons and glazed carrots -- served with braised veal, beef or poultry. Alexander Filippini cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe shows the habits of a professional brigade rather than a home cook: demi-glace and tomato sauce are treated as things already simmering on the stove, the mirepoix needs no explanation, and the garnish is built separately in its own pan and married to the strained braising liquid at the last minute. The autumnal pairing of chestnuts and pork with veal is a long-standing European one, and the dish belongs to the season when fresh chestnuts came to market.