While shopping for meat at one of my favorite butchers: Antonelli’s in Cal Mart I had a great idea, why not make Veal Marrow Bones?!? My experience with Marrow Bones is minimal, I’ve dabbed with a few at fine resturants such as Grand Cafe and COCO500. I purchased a few and attempted greatness. I’ve heard that the preparation is fairly simple so I turned to the trusty Internet to get educated. The easiest recipe I found was one published in the San Francisco Chronicle as follows:

Roast Marrow Bones & Parsley Salad

Adapted from “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating” by Fergus Henderson (HarperCollins, 2004). Diners should spoon the softened marrow over toast, then sprinkle it with coarse salt and top with a few leaves of parsley salad.

INGREDIENTS:

Eight 3-inch center-cut pieces of veal or beef marrow bone

About 2/3 cup very coarsely chopped Italian parsley leaves

1 shallot, shaved or very thinly sliced

1 1/2 teaspoons small capers

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Coarse sea salt, preferably fleur de sel, for garnish

Toast, as needed

INSTRUCTIONS:

Soak the marrow bones in cold salted water about 8 hours to purge them of any blood, changing the water a couple of times.

Preheat the oven to 450º. Put the marrow bones, cut side up, in an ovenproof skillet. Roast until the marrow is loose and softened but not melted, 15 to 20 minutes.

While the bones roast, combine the parsley, shallot and capers in a bowl. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the bones among 4 plates. Toss the parsley salad with just enough dressing to coat the leaves lightly, then divide the salad among the plates. Pass the coarse salt and toast at the table.

…And now for my attempt at greatness.

I slightly modified the recipe to allow me to eat in a shorter amount of time. I soaked my marrow bones in kosher salt and water for two hours. I’m pretty sure I changed the water 3 times. I preheated the oven to 450, and laid out my glorious bones.

After roasting the bones for 20 minutes , I took them out and admired their glory.Notice that big ugly bone on the lower left of the pan? Well the butcher gave me that one when they ran out of the nicer longer bones. So I cooked up that bone and guess what? No marrow anywhere on that sucker! So beware the lure of siren knuckle.

While the bones were cooking I [over]toasted the sourdough bread

and made the parsley salad. I omitted the capers.

This is what it looked like when I put everything together. The bowls contain coarse kosher salt and parsley salad. Here’s a poorly taken close-up

The meal was great! My only criticism is that sitting down and eating six bones really fills you up. These bones are like 80% fat so the salad’s acid really helps in cutting the richness of the marrow. This dish is so simple to make, I could see someone serving it at a cocktail party with champagne or a dry white wine. I would definately make this one again.

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