Roast Veal with Rosemary and Garlic

Roast veal is the Sunday centrepiece of Central and Northern Italian domestic cooking — Tuscany, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna. The larding of the meat with aromatics (often rosemary, garlic, and sometimes cured pork fat) before roasting is an ancient technique that guarantees the aromatic compounds are distributed through the interior of the roast rather than sitting only on the surface.

Italian roast veal — arrosto di vitello — achieves a completely different character from French roast veal through two distinctions: the use of rosemary and garlic inserted directly into the flesh (larding with aromatics rather than fat), and the long, slow basting in its own juices at a moderate temperature rather than the French high-heat-then-lower approach. Hazan is exact about one thing above all others: veal must not be overcooked. Pink at the centre — 63–65°C — is the target. Grey veal has no place at an Italian table.

Rosemary and garlic are the two most powerful aromatics in Italian cooking and both work specifically because their primary compounds (rosemary's camphor and cineole; garlic's allicin breakdown products) are fat-soluble — they extract into and through the veal fat during roasting. A roast without fat carries neither adequately into the meat's interior. The white wine pan sauce provides the acid that cuts the richness of the rendered veal fat — a balance, as Segnit would recognise, between fat and brightness.