Recipe from At My Table.

Well… what a palaver! There was a break of a couple of months between the last recipe and this one due to the amount of time it took me to acquire a marrowbone. It is not as easy as it sounds when your butchers clearly didn’t go to the same school as Nigella’s!

I have two butchers in my town, one didn’t know what I meant when I asked if he sold marrowbone, and the other just didn’t sell them. It’s not something sold in supermarkets, and when I called a butcher in another local town he said he had some but it’s first come-first served and most local residents get them for their dogs as snacks or treats. Anyways, the dogs always beat me to the post, they don’t work a 9-6 like me!

Finally my dad found one at his local butcher and bought it over for me, and reader… it was huge! It’s was also whole. A whole, huge, extremely heavy marrowbone. The butcher refused to cut it, but he did at least have one to hand. So the next thing for me was finding a way to cut into this beast!

“Get yourself a hacksaw”, advised Dad enthusiastically. I didn’t ask why he knew the correct tools for cutting up bones but I trusted the advice. I visited the local hardware shop and bought the smallest, cheapest saw they had. (£2.50, job done). We were finally getting somewhere.

Nigella writes that this is a lovely slow cook. A Sunday supper meant to be relaxing for the cook, and perfect as a cosy, autumnal meal. I however made this on a Tuesday because I had a giant bone in my fridge and had no idea how long it, or it’s contents last, and I just wanted to get this done and over with by now.

So I started preparing the meal at 6pm on a Tuesday, and instantly knew it was going to be a long night… firstly the onions have to be fried for HALF AN HOUR! Cool, cool, cool. Whilst they’re on the hob I’ll crack on with opening up this bone. The recipe calls for bone boats, that’s to say a bone cut in half lengthwise so the fat within is easily accessible. Sure, I thought, I’ll saw the bulging ends off, and then split the bone, no problem.

45 minutes later (I’ve had to take the onions off the hob by this point for fear of them becoming part of the casserole dish) and I’ve managed to saw one end of the bone off. For context with the same flimsy saw it took me half that time to completely hack up and bin bag my 6ft Christmas tree. We were now at 7pm, I could see the hole within the bone where the fat is held, I could get to it without doing anymore sawing, my arm and wrists were aching so much and there was probably more sweat on the chopping board than bone dust by this point! With the help of a screwdriver I was able to extract the fat and continue with the recipe. From here on it really is quite simple. Add the fat, add the meat, pop in the oven for three hours…

THREE HOURS !?!

The recipe calls for the bones (sans fat) to be added to the pan to exude more flavour as it cooks, but mine was still to fat to fit in, so I made the conscious decision to leave that out. I was already extremely proud that I managed to extract the fat in the first place, I wasn’t going to saw for another 45 minutes, no sir!

Three hours, and a bottle and half of red wine later (for me, not the stew) and well past my usual bedtime by this point, the dish was bought out the oven. I had added dumplings, as in my experience any stew is improved with the addition of puffed up dumpy dumplings.

Well… was it delicious? Absolutely. Did I burn my tongue in my haste to eat and get to bed? Of course. Would I make it again? If I had the bones cut as described, and had the time in the day to make, eat, clean up and be in bed by 11 after consuming… 100%.

Now… to find a butcher who knows what he’s talking about.