We picked up a beautiful pork shoulder from Gipps Street Butchery and on a whim I asked for some marrow bones as a lunch time treat, plus there was a recipe from the Michael Ruhlman website I was keen to try out.
Roasted Marrow Bones
Well firstly the lunch time treat is dead simple, grill some bread, chop up capers with parsley, olive oil and a dash of lemon juice, spoon out some pickled red onion (recipe here).
Put the bones on a roasting pan and put in a very hot oven (230°C) for about 20 minutes.
Serve, enjoy and be prepared for a mess.
Extracted and Pan Fried Marrow
Soak the bone in warm water for 15 minutes to soften the fat and make it easier to extract the marrow. Sections from the middle of the bone work best, avoid bone that is near a joint.
Now the messy bit, pushing the marrow out. There will be a big and small end of the marrow, at the small end apply some pressure and with luck the marrow should slide out, if it doesn't you'll have to use a knife or other utensil to slide up the edges of the bone to dislodge the marrow.
Prepare a brine, I used a 5% salt to water mix (1 litre of water & 50 grams of salt).
Soak the marrow in the brine for a couple of days to draw out the blood. You'll need to change the brine a couple of times a day.
So two days had passed and the marrow had soaked in the brine long enough, it was time for another overly indulgent lunch.
The supporting ingredients are pretty much the same as the last marrow dish. You need the freshness of the parsley, saltiness of the capers (and well salt) and the acid of the pickled onions to counter the extreme richness of the marrow. Although you could get away without having pickled onions just add a dash of lemon juice in the mix.
The marrow is drained from the brine and dried on a couple of paper towels.
Dust it in some flour.
Fry in oil until golden. Grape seed or canola are good as they have a neutral flavour.
Drain off the excess oil, and then chuck in a big chunk of butter (because butter makes everything better and well why the hell not) and fry until crisp and golden.
Drain the marrow on some paper towels to soak up any excess fat.
Serve on a toasted slice of baguette. I toasted mine under the grill and then finished off over the open flame of my cooker to give it a charred/roasted flavour.
