Veal

(INVOLTINI DI VITELLO CON PECORINO E ACETO BALSAMIC)

Grill the veal while the noodles boil so both are ready at the same time.

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

When dinner is just for two, why not splurge on veal chops? Accompany this sophisticated entrée with roasted potatoes and sautéed or steamed green beans.

In this classic French dish, a veal roast is sliced and layered with a combination of soubise (onion) and duxelles (mushroom) stuffings, then put back together in the shape of the roast. Traditionally, it's covered with more stuffing and heavily coated with a Mornay sauce (which glazes the roast as it's heated in the oven). In our updated version, we keep the soubise and duxelles separate and arrange them side by side — black contrasting with white — on each veal slice, so the stuffings are visible. We use only a very thin coating of Mornay to glaze the dish, and serve the rest on the side.

Bettina says that this recipe is one of her delicious and dependable standbys.

You can substitute skinless boneless chicken breasts for the veal cutlets. Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 35 min

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Serve with: Orzo with parsley, and steamed carrots and green beans. Dessert: Pear tart.

"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.

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."

For this recipe we used what the butcher calls the first cut or brisket cut of the veal breast — it's the thicker, upper portion.

Any leftover sauce from this recipe would be delicious served with boiled new potatoes or crudités. The sauce keeps 4 days, chilled and covered. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

"At a recent lunch at the Stage House Inn in Scotch Plains, I was served a braised veal shank," writes Max J. Kalm of Westfield, New Jersey. "This version was so much better than the ones I’ve prepared. Would chef David Drake be willing to share his recipe?" The restaurant serves this entrée with a vegetable risotto. Mashed potatoes would also be a good side dish for the veal shanks.