Veal

Capers lend tangy contrast to the sweet bell peppers. Serve the stew over egg noodles

This hearty stew is great served over egg noodles. Bitter greens with a creamy Gorgonzola dressing would be a good side salad. Have sliced bananas and strawberries drizzled with honey and balsamic vinegar for an elegant dessert.

From being a regional dish from Piedmont in Italy, osso buco has caught the imagination worldwide. Thick slices from the veal shank with its central marrow bone are key to osso buco, so that the meat remains moist and becomes tender enough to fall from the bone. When the dish is cooked ahead, the flavor will deepen and mellow. As for the curious gremolata flavoring of garlic, parsley, and lemon, I myself like to add a generous sprinkling to my veal at the table, although purists use only just enough for a delicate nuance. Risotto milanese, flavored with veal stock and saffron is the classic accompaniment. Wine for Cooking Gavi di Gavi (sometimes labeled as cortese di Gavi) is Piedmont's best-known white wine. Gavi is no longer inexpensive, however, and oyu might do just as well with an Italian chardonnay, which is rapidly supplanting cortese as the most widely planted white grape in Piedmont. Wine to Drink When osso buco reaches the table, an authoritative red from Piedmont is in order — a mature barolo or barbaresco, whose bouquet and will match the complexity of this Italian classic.

A light, lemony sauce makes this entrée great for spring dinner parties. Round out the menu with the Chive Jive New Potatoes and Sesame Asparagus. Pour a slightly chilled full-bodied Chardonnay throughout the meal. Conclude the evening with angel food cake from the bakery and fresh berries.

A stylish dinner party dish with a bonus: Much of the prep work can be done a day ahead. At the store, have the butcher bone and trim all of the fat and membrane from a 4 3/4-pound center-cut veal rib roast, resulting in a 3-pound oblong boneless veal loin.

The eclectic menu at Razz's Restaurant & Bar in Scottsdale, Arizona, takes its cues from around the world. This curried veal dish is representative of chef-owner Erasmo "Razz" Kamnitzers talents. Razz is fond od of grains, so rice pilaf is appropriate here, along with steamed green and yellow zucchini. Vanilla puddings sprinkled with pistachios and raspberries would make a nice finish to this exotic menu. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

The secret of making fried rice lies in the use of cold, cooked rice. Freshly cooked rice will only produce a sticky mess.

"I recently had lunch at Café Boulud here in New York," says Shelli Rafkin of New York, New York. "My entrée, blanquette de veau, had the most incredible sauce I've ever tasted. The whole dish, in fact, was sensational." In this variation on the classic stew, the veal and the vegetables are cooked separately and combined at the end, when they're topped with a rich white sauce.

Having relatives who live near Lansing, Illinois, gives Janice and Paul Abrinko a reason to visit that part of the country—and after trying the veal with Gorgonzola sauce and red cabbage at Cafe Borgia, they have one more reason to go.

Veal chops from a butcher are usually about 1 1/4 inches thick and weigh 12 to 14 ounces each. The supermarket variety of chop is thinner and smaller, ranging from 8 to 10 ounces each, and would only need to be roasted 12 to 15 minutes in this recipe.

"When it's on the menu, I always order the sautéed veal with shrimp sauce at Kelsey's Restaurant here in New Orleans," writes Angela Stuck of Louisiana. "Can you get the recipe?"

There is probably nothing more dramatic — or better to eat — than a whole veal shank. It's a showstopper; when we bring this out from the kitchen prior to carving it tableside, every head turns, and for good reason. The succulent meat and the delicious marrow are truly impressive.

I hadn't expected to find an entry on meat loaf in Alan Davidson's magisterial Oxford Companion to Food (1999). Indeed, I only looked it up there so I could say that meat loaf was a great and ubiquitous dish that everyone snubbed. Meat loaf, I intended to say, is a kind of joke.... Alan Davidson let me down. He had plenty to say about meat loaf..."a dish whose visibility is considerably higher in real life, especially in N. America and Britain, than in cookery books."