Cotes de Veau & Compromise

I am a dedicated meal planner. This will come as no surprise anyone who knows me, given that one of my most salient character traits is that I plan everything. My life can be more or less boiled down to a complex hierarchy of lists, ones that only I understand. Often my 'To Do' list will feature sub-lists as well as reminders to make other lists, a fact which is frightening and comic and tragic all at once.

So once a week --usually Thursday -- I sit down and look at the seven days ahead. I look at which nights I'll be at home and I plan what I'd like to cook. Sometimes I'll cruise through magazines and cookbooks for inspiration, sometimes I'll just get a load of vegetables and a protein and wing it.

The advantages of planning meals this way are manyfold: I can tackle all the food ordering for the week in one go (from Freshdirect, which means that I can do it from my desk instead of braving the yuppie mosh pit that is Wholefoods); it removes all day-to-day 'what are we doing for dinner tonight' anxiety; and it drastically reduces the number of sheepish takeout food orders made due to lack of creativity, energy, motivation.

The big downside: sometimes I get ahead of myself in these meal planning sessions, and my ambition wanes in between the actual planning and execution of said meals.

For instance, last night. There's a recipe in the November issue of Saveur for Braised Veal Breast with Artichokes. Now doesn't everything about that sound completely fantastic? I thought so too. No-brainer. Monday night dinner!

Unfortunately so preoccupied was I by the elegance and very French-ness of this dish that I lost site of the fact that, oh I don't know, I have a day job. The recipe involved straining and reducing a sauce, many different different pots and pans, a 2 hour braise. In my French culinary fantasy none of this would be an issue because I would turn on some jazz and uncork a bottle of Sancerre around 4 PM -- so that's right after my afternoon nap -- and then spend the rest of the evening tending to dinner in a leisurely yet perfectionist fashion.

In my actual life I arrived home at 7 PM, to an apartment that looked like it had been trashed by thugs, limping because I had worn shoes all day that were too small (but on such a good sale!) and my feet were now riddled with blisters. What I really, truly wanted to do was to stare into space for a couple hours, or at the very most watch cable and do my laundry in peace.

So what to do under these circumstances? When you have $35 worth of veal rib chops in your refrigerator and less than zero desire to do right by them?

I compromised. I did not leave the veal languishing in the fridge and dine on white wine and popcorn, as I had half a mind to do. But I did dispense with the fussy, lengthy recipe and looked for the simplest way to prepare the perishable ingredients that I had stocked.

So, I roasted a Delicata squash that I had hanging around. I prepped the artichoke hearts, tossed them in boiling water with half a lemon for 15 minutes, sliced them thin, and then sauteed them in a hot skillet with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

For the veal chops: I turned to Julia Child, who can always be counted on to give you a straightforward and reliable way to cook nearly any cut of meat. Her recommendation for cotes de veau was to brown them, then transfer them to the oven in a casserole dish with some shallots and white wine and let them cook for 20 minutes. The white wine braising liquid then gets heated on the stovetop and reduced down, with butter, a splash of stock, and salt and pepper added in at the end. I put a veal chop together on a plate with the artichokes and Delicata squash and ladled the sauce over the whole thing.