Côtes de Veau

Côtes de Veau (sautéed veal chops) teaches the Sauté, quick cooking in a shallow pan over lively heat, better than almost any cut. The one true thing is space: dry chops in a broad, properly hot pan brown; crowded chops release water and stew. Choose the sauté over the grill here, and clarified butter gives you both the heat and the control the veal needs.

The original entry assumed a saucier beside the range, a pale meat glaze already waiting, and stock never off the fire. At home, reduce a modest measure of unsalted veal stock, cook the chops in two uncrowded batches, then finish the glaze in their pan. The separate sauce station was brigade scaffolding. The clarified-butter sauté, pouring away the spent fat, swilling the pan with Madeira, reducing honestly, and finishing with real butter are the dish itself. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Cooked correctly, the veal is Maillard bronze outside, tender with a faint blush within, and covered with a pale amber glaze that clings before pooling on the platter. Guard the fond during that lively sauté: bronze is flavor, black is bitterness, and this is the step that matters most before you touch the pan.