There is a restaurant here in San Francisco, Bar Tartine, that has a lovely menu ranging from locally harvested veggies to fatastically prepared roasts. My most favorite item on their menu is the roasted beef marrow. I had never tried this dish before going to Bar Tartine.

Let me tell you, once I had them, I found every excuse to go there for dinner as often as possible. It is not inexpensive, so it was quite an undertaking financing my new obsession. But, they never let me down. Each and every order showed up at the table piping hot with a lovely herbed salad and perfectly toasted bread slices. Frankly, I like going there with vegetarians, that way I get the whole order to myself.

Today, I am on day two of staying home sick. As mentioned in my previous post, I have taken to cooking my own comfort foods. And, so, this morning when I was at Whole Foods picking up fruit, I wandered over to the meat counter. They did indeed stock (no pun intended…ok, well maybe a little pun), beef marrow bones.

But then, the questions began:
“is it for soup?”
“did you want the femur or the knuckles?”
“how many pounds did you need?”

Short of telling the butchers about my craziness for the Bar Tartine version, I tried to give them the sense that I knew what I was doing. I explained I was just roasting them and serving them with toast. He figured out that I wanted the femur cut into smallish pieces and went off to saw the bones apart for me. In the end, I didn’t come off as an idiot, and came home with $12 worth of the loveliest beef marrow I’ve ever seen (ok, I guess I’d never seen it raw until this morning…).

In the end, I realize that Gran Fran did make osso bucco periodically utilizing the same (or very close to the same) types of bones. Once I got them marrow home, I placed some in a pan and stared at it. It resembled the cooked appetizer I loved from Bar Tartine, but it also seemed like a daunting task to get these bones from raw to roasted.

The recipe I based my first batch on came from Group Recipes. I used it mostly to make sure of how to put the bones in the pan, but improvised from there. So, herewith, my version (I’ve now made two batches) of an almost-as-good-version of Roasted Bone Marrow ala Bar Tartine.

Roasted Bone Marrow
serves 6 as an appetizer

Ingredients:
3 lbs Beef Bone Marrow cut into 3 inch long pieces

• 1 cup loosely packed Italian Parsley
• 3 cloves Garlic
• 3 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

• Place marrow bones cut side up in oven proof skillet or roasting pan.

• Roast in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, just until the marrow gets soft, the outside of the bones are lightly browned and the excess fat on the bones has browned as well.

• While bones are roasting, finely chop the parsley and garlic. Mix with the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. If you have an electric chopper, this is a good time to use it.

• Toast bread pieces.

• Serve with small spoons to scoop out the heavenly marrow, which can be placed on the toast with the parsley mixture.

ps check out those photos, huh? thanks again to gran fran and joe for my swanky new camera! xo