I gotta say, I’m liking this pan-roasting technique … a lot. Maybe that’s why so many Italian vacation rentals don’t have ovens? Who needs them!
This is a great way to prep small birds (see the squab post) or roasts. Really, especially in the summer, when I don’t want to heat up the entire house by lighting the big oven. Anyway, the recipe…
The hardest part of this recipe – finding the cut of meat. Marcella suggests a rolled shoulder (boneless) of veal but here in suburbia, where unfortunately, most butchers have fallen away, and even the supermarkets get their meat pre-cut, finding this cut of meat was difficult at best. I guess if I hadn’t waited until the last minute, I could have ordered it online but time was of the essence, so I needed to find it the old-fashioned, in an actual store.
I called Whole Foods, and though they claimed to get it in, it seemed each time I spoke with the butcher, the meat, though ordered didn’t arrive. I made Chris ask the “butcher” in our local supermarket. Of course he knew little about veal shoulder, how to get it or offered any assistance. Finally, I called the meat department for the Shop Rite in East Brunswick, where a most helpful man said he would order it for me and have it in the store the next day. He told me to come after 11:00 or even a bit later, because the meat delivery people sometimes ran late.
I arrived at the store at 12:50 as they were just unloading the truck. My meat man went out back and had them rush to get my order unloaded and then, because it came in an 8 lb roast (yikes) he sliced it down for me giving me a roast bigger than the 2 pounds Marcella suggested, something more like 3.25 to 3.5 pounds – no worries though I had the meat!

Raw meet with a bit of garlic popping out, and rosemary atop
After that it was simple, mine was a huge chunk (not a roll), so I did as the directions suggested and made slits in the roast into which I stuffed the garlic. I got some fresh rosemary from the garden and sprinkled that liberally around the meet, browned, salt and pepper, and some wine, and boom about 2.5 hours later (took longer because mine was a larger cut), we had our roast. Chris, Becky and Fala approved.

Roast out from the pan

Sliced Roast with Juices