How Johnny Mathis Almost Ruined My Mom’s Veal Marsala
Photo: Brian Hagiwara / Getty Images
Two things caught my eye the other day while I was banging around the Internet trying to figure out what to make for dinner: Veal was on sale for less than $9 a pound and Johnny Mathis’s latest record, Sending You a Little Christmas, earned a Grammy nomination. Problem solved. We’d be eating veal marsala.
Thanks to my mother, veal marsala and Johnny Mathis are forever linked. I love her veal marsala (recipe below) and she loves Johnny Mathis, even though he once almost ruined her dinner. The key word is “almost,” because Johnny Mathis could never ruin anything for my mother.
She’s nursed a heavy-duty crush on Johnny (it was always “Johnny” in our house) ever since he first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957, the same year Chances Are, Wonderful! Wonderful!, and The Twelfth of Never hit the airwaves. For years she would drag my father around Massachusetts to see Mathis perform at places like the old Frolics Theater in Salisbury Beach and the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, where she last saw him on a Saturday night about 10 years ago.
It was never too early for my mother to start celebrating the arrival of Johnny. The night before the show she headed to Market Basket to pick up ingredients for a special veal marsala dinner. With a full basket, she made her last stop in the produce section. And there, standing in front of the tomatoes, wearing a plaid shirt and pressed blue jeans (yes, she remembers what he was wearing), stood her Johnny, who loves to cook and told Yahoo Food that he often makes meals for himself while on the road. Should I approach him, my mother thought. Should I invite him to dinner?
Too flustered to decide what to do, she paid for her groceries, walked to the nearest payphone, and called my father for advice. (I could have told her what he’d say if I were with her.) “Judy, will you just come home and make dinner.” That’s what she did, only to discover she had left her basket full of groceries next to the payphone. By the time she returned to the market, the basket was gone. So was Johnny. But he made it up to my mother during his performance the next night at the auditorium.
She still has her Johnny, and I’m still making her veal marsala. Here’s how to do it.
Veal Marsala in a Can
Time: About 1 hour and 15 minutes
Serves about 8 adults or 2 meals each for a family of 5 good eaters
I refer to the dish this way since it calls for Campbell’s Soup beef consommé. The sodium content might be enough to rival the Dead Sea, but the consommé’s rich flavor is perfect for this dish. I’m almost always disappointed when I use something else. The marsala is a fairly fast and easy option that kids love. I fed it to a group of finicky eaters once and their parents were surprised by how much they ate. You can also substitute chicken for veal. Serve it on a bed of pasta with a side of any vegetable you know your kids will eat.
3 lbs. veal
2 cans Campbell’s Soup beef consommé
1 1/3 soup can (use the empty Campbell’s can to measure) marsala wine
2 packages white mushrooms (about 20 oz., halved and rubbery ends discarded. Throw in another pack if you want.)
About ½ cup olive oil in all
Pepper to taste (I don’t add any additional salt; the consommé contains enough)
4 beaten eggs and about 1 cup flour for dredging the meat
Plenty of your favorite pasta
Parsley for garnish (optional)
Combine the consommé and wine in a medium-size pot or pan. Bring to a boil, lower the temperature to simmer, and reduce the sauce. (This concentrates the flavors and evaporates the alcohol; add up to ½ cup of water if you find you need more liquid.)
Cover the bottom of your biggest pan with about 1/8-inch of oil. Heat it for a few minutes on medium-high so the oil shimmers but doesn’t smoke. (Add more oil if needed while cooking the meat and mushrooms.)
While the oil heats, coat the meat in an egg bath then dredge each piece in flour. Sauté the meat, about 4 pieces at a time. Crack some pepper, about 3 or 4 turns, over the meat while it cooks. Don’t crowd the pieces. Cook the meat fast: about 50 seconds each side for the veal, depending on the thickness of the cut. You want a firm golden crust on the outside and rare meat inside; it will fully cook while simmering in the sauce. Place the finished meat aside.
Sauté the mushrooms in the same pan. Add some cracked pepper. When the mushrooms are cooked (leave about half the liquid in the pan to bolster the sauce), layer the meat on top and pour in the sauce. Bring the liquid to a low boil for about 3 minutes, then simmer uncovered for about 25 minutes, occasionally spooning the sauce over the meat. Serve on the pasta with plenty of sauce.
More family-style dinners:
Why I use my slow-cooker overnight
Tomato sauce to please the kids and a crowd
Coq au vin from the Domestic Daddy blog
What recipe has been passed down in your family?
