I love veal. I particularly love milk fed veal that has pale nearly 
beige meat when raw and a nice pink when perfectly cooked. U.S. veal tends to be milk fed. Australian veal, which I also like, is quite red in comparison (easily mistaken for beef, as in this photo here) but also tastes delicious. I lived in the U.S. for several years and enjoyed my share of veal while there. When I moved back to Asia, I would dream of veal chops with increasing frequency until I was lucky enough to eat one or took a trip back to the U.S. So when someone comes for a visit from the States, and they are willing to carry just about anything, veal is it for me. In the past month we have had two racks of veal in our home…more than we cook in an entire year. Not only did I get the roast, I also got to eat lots of leftovers!
We cooked the first rack of veal a couple of days after Christmas. 
I had ordered it from my favorite butcher and he assured me it was top quality Australian beef. At about 6 kilos, it was substantial. Then my sister arrived from New York a few days later and in her maletas was another rack of veal, this time my pale milk-fed favorite so we cooked that the next night. To cook, follow this simple and fool-proof recipe: chop up 2-3 carrots, several stalks of crisp celery, 2-3 white onions and place them at the bottom of a large roasting pan. Place the veal roast on top of this and season the roast well with salt, pepper and lots of dried and/or fresh thyme. Put in a 375 degree oven until cooked rare (perhaps an internal temperature of 120 if you have an instant read thermometer. My six kilo roast took about 1.5 hours, I think. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes before slicing.
Remove the roast and let it rest on a plate or cutting board. 
Then put the roasting pan over a flame and deglaze with a can or two of chicken stock and or some white wine and stock. Add some salt and pepper to taste and perhaps ½ tablespoon of cornstarch to just slightly thicken the sauce. Strain and serve with the sliced veal. This is more of a jus or sauce, not thick gravy. It is absolutely delicious and make sure you make a lot so you have sauce for the leftovers! What’s the best part of the roast? The bones, of course!
14 Responses
Where do you get your veal from in Metro Manila MM? (Or is that a trade secret?)
I think Filipinos generally have an aversion to rare (gasp! raw and red) meat … but the good thing about roasting a huge piece of meat (in your case, veal) is that there are different levels of “done-ness” throughout it. =)
I love veal and miss it too. How I wish someone would send me some veal.hehehe…Im jealous!
and no one lectures you about veal.. too young etc hehehe
love roast veal…not all butchers here carry veal though
mine would be medium!!!
marketman, how do you take fresh meat through customs comming from the US to the PI? i always think of buying a $100 rack of NY stip steak and taking it home for my family.
Pete, customs doesn’t seem to mind raw meat. I have taken home a large igloo cooler with blue ice and several cuts of meat within. The airline cargo hold is about 40-45 degrees, almost like a refrigerator so even in a bag the meat would be comfy. You just have to get it to a fridge soon after landing. Customs doesn’t even seem to frown on fruit that you declare, my cousins brought me a case of stone fruit two weeks ago (peaches, plums, nectarines, etc.) and they allowed that in, it was even declared on the forms. Schatzli, I have heard the lectures before but I eat lechon de leche which is equally “cruel” I suppose. Wysgal, you can order racks of veal from Santis in Makati. They can also cut it up into thin or thick (I like it this way) chops. A double rib chop is just the right nice thickness for me.
medium rare for me… yum!
Mmmmm!!! I love veal! Roasted like that, it HAS to be medium-rare. Fully-cooked (aka well-done) roast veal (or beef) is a sacrilege. :)
That top photo looks absolutely perfect! Yum!
Marketman! It just hit me, you’re a veritable male, online Martha Stewart! Minus the insider trading scandal, of course. I don’t know how you feel about her, so just to be clear, I definitely mean this as a compliment!
Your outlook is just so positive! And creative too! I mean, who would have thought you can make a topiary out of Dalandan? Everything’s excellent! Thank you. You’re my lifestyle guru!
I used to love eating veal, but stopped when I heard how they were raised. This was over 10 years ago. Apparently, they are kept almost immobile in tight cages so as not to toughen their muscles, then forced to ingest nothing but milk. I have no problem with the animals’ young age, as like you, I think Lechon de Leche’s fine. It’s the cruel treatment they have to go through during their short life that bothers me. It’s the same reason I won’t try Pinikpikan. Do enlighten us on this, MM. Because if I learn that it’s not true, then I will happily go back to eating veal!
By the way, someone recently told me the recent popularity of Chilean Sea Bass has caused their overfishing, and that they’re now endangered. If true, I may have to give that up too! :-( What’s a conscientious foodie to do?!
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Katrina, you’re right about Chilean Sea Bass. Its real name is actually “Patagonian Toothfish”. The industrial fishing fleets discovered this fish after exhausting the deep sea stock of another kind of fish. Since its name sounded so unappetizing, the marketing geniuses came up with “Chilean Sea Bass”. And yes, it IS endangered due to overfishing. The stocks have collapsed so much that many restaurants have stopped serving it, in the hopes that a drop in demand will make the fishing fleets stop catching it. I love it, but I won’t eat it anymore.
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fried neurons and katrina, yes to the “chilean sea bass” comments. As for veal, I am not sure of treatment but I would err on the its probably not the best for their dignity explanation. But if we are to get caught up in maltreatment…here are some examples. Commercial chickens in the west are intentionally blinded early in their life so that they don’t peck each other in close quarters so you can cut out just about every chicken dish in America, pork is treated to incredible bio-genetic alteration and so juiced up with steriods and other bad stuff that you have to wonder. Ditto the appalling conditions turkey is commercially raised in. And well, cows seem to be less battered but I just don’t know enough. Kobe beef would fall in with the veal maltreatment vein as well. Eating any serious tuna means serious collateral damage to dolphins and other nice inedible sea creatures. Tuna for sashimi are kept in pens in the ocean off of Australia so that they can be harvested with less stress (no line fishing and fighting that tenses muscles) and air flown nearly alive to Japanese wholesale markets… at any rate, I do have problems with the whole maltreatment issue but am not as bothered as some. On pinikpikan, I wholheartedly agree but I didn’t grow up in the Mt. Provinces, my comments on that issue are in my Ham and Chicken Soup that I created after research to do a proper pinikpikan had me shocked and unable to do a real one!
Hi everyone.
If you think about it, is there really a kinder way of killing something and eating it? Environmental issues are one thing but some movements for animal rights, i think, are just too much. I remember there was an article some months back on Gourmet magazine featuring a Lobster festival in the U.S. and it drew so much strong reaction from readers because the author gave considerable weight on animal rights instead of just focusing on the pleasures of eating a lobster! Apparently, there are people who are bothered by killing lobsters (by putting it in a pot of boiling water while still alive)- bothered enough to swear off eating lobsters altoghether.
In any case, the good news is, most farmers now realize that meat from animals subjected to minimum stress is several times better in quality than meat from stressed animals, especially just before they are slaughtered. This can be good, like in the case of one farm in the u.s. that provides cows with an air cushion to sleep on! But you know, I think there’s something really sinister about pampering something only to kill it later on to consume its flesh! It’s just as cruel as torturing something before killing it!
here’s an interesting link about animal cruelty:
https://www.themeatrix.com/
and entertaining too!
MM, where does your sister but her rack of veal? Have you heard of Omaha Steaks? Is it any good? How did your sister pack the rack of veal in her maleta? I’m planning to go home next month and want to bring my family some meat. If I use a maleta instead of an igloo cooler how should I pack the meat?
Thanks and more power!