About 40 years ago I bought a ‘real French’ cookbook during a summer holiday in the south of France. It was a low-budget student vacation, and apparently I was craving good food. This cookbook contains dishes that the French eat at home, not nouvelle cuisine or the fancy dishes served in Parisian restaurants. Regional dishes and classics, with local products. So this time again.
The pictures are very dated…
Picnic with white bread and cola, on holiday in the Languedoc 
Classic and regional dishes
A dish from this book that I like to make is Ossobuco the Corsican way.
Last summer we spent a week with family in the Hautes-Alpes, at the Lac de Savines. I like to cook once in a while and had brought along a copy of this recipe. It’s actually a little dangerous to venture into a dish of your host’s national cuisine, but hey, my family isn’t very strict about it, and you can’t go wrong with a stew, as long as you have enough. takes time.
In a French supermarket in Aix-en-Provence, where we also stayed a few days on the way to the Hautes-Alpes, I actually found Corsican rosé, and later the butcher in Embrun not only had beautiful veal shanks but also coppa, a raw ham that (under other) is made in Corsica.
So after 40 years I could finally make the original, authentic recipe! I don’t know if it was the authentic products, but this osso buco was very successful. In any case, you could clearly taste that the ingredients were of good quality.
Groceries in Embrun 
Lac de Savines from the Pic de Morgon
Ossobuco a la Corsoise
This recipe is for 6 people
1500 grams veal shank in slices of 2 to 3 cm thick
A thick slice of coppa (Coppa di Parma is readily available in the Netherlands), in dice
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove
3 large well-ripened tomatoes (or a can of peeled tomatoes)
100 grams of butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pepper and salt
Thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, parsley
2 glasses of rosé, preferably Corsican rosé.
Season the veal shanks with salt and pepper and sauté in a frying pan in a mixture of butter and olive oil until golden brown. Add the onion and coppa, and the thyme, rosemary, bay leaf and parsley. Fry the new ingredients for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes and garlic to the pan. Add water until the shanks are half covered, then add the two glasses of rosé. Put the lid on the pan and simmer the shanks until they are soft. According to the cookbook about 40 minutes, but with me it often takes 2 hours.
Urgent advice: make the dish a day in advance, so that the flavors really soak into the meat.
Serve rice with the ossobuco.
