Osso Buco with Saffron Risotto

Veal shank is the whole engine here, and you choose it by the bone and the collar of meat around it, not by weight alone — you want a good ring of meat with marrow visibly filling the centre, not a thin bone with scraps. If veal shank isn't to hand or the price makes you wince, beef shin on the bone will braise the same way, just expect a slightly deeper, beefier result and possibly a longer stretch under the lid, since beef muscle is tougher than veal.

The vegetable base — onion, garlic, carrot, celery — isn't there for bulk. It's the classic soffritto-style foundation: cooked gently until soft (not coloured hard), it sweetens as it breaks down and disappears into the sauce, giving body without you needing to add cream or extra fat. Chop it finely and evenly, because unevenly cut vegetable throws unevenly cooked vegetable into the braise, and you'll find hard flecks of carrot three hours later when everything else has surrendered.

Tomatoes — canned, chopped, plus paste — do the acid and sweetness work and, with the wine, start building the sauce that will coat the meat. Wine here isn't about getting drunk on flavour; the alcohol cooks off over the long simmer and what's left is the acidity and fruit that balance the richness of the marrow. Any dry wine you'd actually drink is fine — don't buy a "cooking wine," which is usually just a wine someone decided not to drink, badly.

The stock carries the simmer. Use a stock with actual body — a proper beef or veal stock if you can get it, vegetable stock if that's what's open — because this liquid isn't a background note, it's most of what the meat sits in for hours. A thin, salty stock cube dissolved in water will leave the whole pot tasting thin too.

For the risotto: the rice has to be a short-to-medium grain type bred to release starch — arborio, carnaroli, that family — because ordinary long-grain rice (the kind you'd put under a Sunday roast's gravy) won't break down the same way and you'll get separate grains in liquid, not creaminess. Saffron is there for colour and a faint, specific bitterness-edged aroma; a pinch goes a long way, and there's no real substitute — turmeric will give you yellow and nothing else, so don't bother pretending. Parmesan and butter stirred in at the end, off the heat, bind the starch and fat into that glossy finish; add them too early over high heat and they can split or turn grainy instead of silky.

Lemon zest, in both the risotto and the gremolata, is doing acid work without adding liquid — zest the lemon with a fine grater or zester, avoiding the white pith underneath, which is bitter and will undo the point of adding it at all.

On time: the recipe says three hours for the osso buco and that's a floor, not a target to beat. A domestic hob runs hotter and less evenly than professional equipment, so check the pot isn't boiling hard — you want a bare simmer, the surface barely moving, lid mostly on. If it's rattling and spitting, the outside of the meat will cook long before the marrow and connective tissue have had time to soften, and you'll end up with dry shreds in a good sauce, which is the opposite of what three hours is meant to buy you. The tell for doneness isn't the clock: it's the meat starting to loosen from the bone and the marrow turning soft enough to scoop with the small spoon that traditionally comes with this dish — that's patience being spent correctly, not time being watched nervously.