A fine name for a pub, though The Buff’n’Barra might be more appropriate here in the Top End. Better keep that from the ‘Hoff’, who’s apparently going to build a bar somewhere around here Casablanca style. Anyway, a classic leftover concoction here. We had an amazing sunset barbecue on Simon’s wee chunk of land here in Katherine, a 200acre nature playground. I took along a side of Barra kindly given by Mel, and we threw that on the hot plate over charcoal with no adornment. Most of it got left as the shoulder of pork was beautiful and even crackled successfully over hot coals. So tonight, on my tod, I made an Indonesian flavour noodle soup. I had some deeply amazing beef stock from some roast beef ribs (roasted 5 hrs) and a left over bit of ‘roo thigh bone. To this, some insane homemade paste from out local shop in Wanguri, weirdly, which must have chillies, shallots and balacan (fermented prawn brick) amongst other unknowns. I had some leftover fatty rib meat, the barra, a mushroom, some rice and mung bean noodles and some spinach and rocket mix which I just put in the end to wilt. Washed down with Vale/Dark as shown. Glorious.

Shona picked up a bag of beef bones at the supermarket on the tip off from an Italian guy who was prcuring offal of some kind, though I think he suggested these were for the dog. Little does he know the joyous lubricant that resides in dem bones- which is odd, given osso bucco, (later). Maybe $6 for the pile shown, and what a marrow harvest, wow. I used some on a pizza, which I think I just served plain. I do remember it was the finest pizza night ever. What to use on next……?

The bones I roasted and made a spiffing stock. Maybe next time I’ll do Fergus Henderson’s signature roast marrow bone salad. Oooh, some sourdough to smear that on would be divine…….

The dessert pizza reappeared, but this incarnation included some rather sour plums with a nice dark skin. I was really chuffed with how this turned out. The plums were delicious. It’s amazing how some fruits just explode into life after cooking, the skins seem to be the treasure box of flavour. I’m never that taken with blueberries until you cook the buggers. A decent sprinkle of vanilla sugar and some butter for, well, obvious reasons. Maybe I should try this with a

Shona found a recipe for ‘Tuscan rabbit’. I don’t have it to hand, but bloody hell, it was amazing. Ah, here it is. I’m usually a bit suspect of tomatoey concoctions, I often find them a bit too bloody tomatoey, allowing not much other flavour to express. But this was bloody amazing. Lovely sweetness from the onions, and the fennel was a subtle background too. Very nice. Shona made a huge amount of sauce so this has reappeared with some ‘luv a duck’ pork and duck fennel sausages. They are very fine meaty sausages, more suited to this cooking than a bbq. Definitely not a snag or banger.

Now Woolies has a few things over Coles, and these veal osso bucco are one of them. The last OB’s I did was beef, and it suggested to me why veal is preferable for the wet stove fry method. The beef ones quite dried up and contorted by the time they were edible. These veal beauties were cooked in 1.5 hrs or so, stayed moist and didn’t buckle up over themselves. Just slow cooked adding only white wine, and then some bonkers purple carrots to cook as shown. Should have used the excess marrow above for a risotto Milanese……