Ingredients: These Old Bones

Nose To Tail

Fergus Henderson has many wonderful quotes. My favorite is his query about why couples shopped for a couch or a TV as their first furniture purchase. He asked plaintively, “Don’t they know that the table comes first?”  He is also the chef who co-founded one of the earliest truly nose-to-tail restaurants in London – St John. I loved his cookbook but could find very few takers in the shop. I think it is a shame that we in the US squander a fortune on steaks and chops, and even some pretty premium pricing on hamburger but are squeamish about the other parts of a butchered animal. I live with someone who has a fetish for our ground beef to be exactly 75% ground chuck and 25% beef fat. But he too associates the following discussion  with a wish that we could try “it” some other day. And sometimes he is pleasantly surprised when the “it” in question is served. 

The Awful Offal

The “its” in question are cuts like lamb kidneys, veal liver, tripe, fish collars and livers, marrow bones — all those lovely bits we never see at a meat or fish counter. I am here to make up for this missing part of your life. This plate of roasted marrow bones with a parsley salad is a classic part of the St John menu. It’s always on offer to diners, and for good reason. For me, marrow is the delicious part of  the Italian dish Osso Buco, and any rendition of  Risotto Milanese  that bears the title should have marrow in the preparation. And if you are like a large percentage of Americans who like to read about health benefits of foods, marrow is your friend. It’s not just fat. It also has loads of glucosamine, which helps with osteoarthritis, and collagen, which is good for maintaining bone health. 

Accessorizing Roasted Marrow Bones

We have bought both beef and veal marrow bones from The Organic Butcher in Mclean and Butchers Alley. For Osso Buco and risotto, you want them cut horizontally (in round discs), but for the Fergus Henderson specialty, I prefer them to be cut lengthwise. The bones and marrow should look white and pink, and I would stick with organically raised beef, for obvious reasons. You can also get cute little marrow spoons to use as part of the presentation of this dish, as well as for Osso Buco. You can increase the size of the salad to fit the number of marrow bones you serve. I use more greens and make more of this particular vinaigrette for just the two of us.  

You can use toasted slices of baguette, but a good white sandwich loaf is perfect too (we love the one from Maribeth’s Bakery). Fergus Henderson features an all-parsley salad with a bit of fresh tarragon,  but one with small arugula leaves or a mixed herb salad with the same vinaigrette and chopped shallots from his recipe is great too. And varieties of fresh herbs are usually featured in many farmers markets starting in  the spring. I  prefer the larger salted capers from Moulins Mahjoub over the tiny ones preserved in vinegar that are suggested in his recipe.The recipe card is Fergus Henderson’s recipe exactly, but I like the longer marrow bones cut along the length.

A short time in a hot oven allows the marrow to get cooked just enough so that the fat does not melt away. That is the only tricky part of this simple dish – I let them roast too long one time and I had rendered marrow fat and empty bones.  Either way you have the bones sliced works for this dish. It’s nice to have a dish of  either the large Sel Gris from France or the Maldon Salt flakes from the UK to sprinkle onto the toasts with the roasted marrow.