This is my start, but maybe this is not what you find in the market. Veal breast has always been around and cheap. Ask the man at the meat window about it. You can tell by the color of this piece that it is not the white veal so many object to, but a normal animal that is being treated decently. It happens that at my supermarket there is a sign saying where it's reared and where it's butchered. Both are towns near to me. That's a particularity though, and it's not crucial information.

Anyway, so you get veal breast and it has rib bones in it and it is a flat piece with a flap. You can fix that.

No running into the bathroom or the bedroom and pretending it's all too much. It is not a highly specialized skill! You can do this, armed only with a thin sharp knife and some basic common sense. If you have time to watch American Idol, Deal or No Deal or Isola dei Famosi, you have time to do this and save a bundle.

One way to remove the bones is to work from the underside and slit the thin membrane over each bone, then using your fingers to slip up and around the bone, you can get it free. If it is attached to anything, cut around what it is attached to and remove that, too. Another way is more like filleting fish. You need a boning knife for that. You insert the boning knife on one side of the first bone and run it along. sawing a bit, over all of them until they are free, then go underneath the bones and do the same thing. Those are now spareribs, because they are ribs and they are spare and not required for this dish at all. See how logical cooking is?

Whichever way you have done it, you will then have a flat piece of meat that could have cost you $6 per pound or more if someone at a butcher's did it for you. Work it out.

Why did you learn this? Because you are the first or second generation not to know how to do this, after centuries in which every ancestor knew how and had to do it unless she had servants. It isn't like corning your own beef or making marzipan, it's easy. It's basic knowledge that helps you to better meat for less money. Rolled veal breast is superb meat. It can be made up to be very fancy or it can be simple. You can remove excess fat if there is any– mine didn't have any– and you are in control of what you eat.

Get out cotton string that isn't coated or treated. If you've any questions about your current string, ask at the butcher's counter or buy kitchen string at a supermarket — depending on which country you live in. Get out a pair of shears. Put whatever you want on that flat piece of meat– here you see coarse sea salt, thyme and a branch of rosemary. Another idea is stuffing like you put into a turkey. Still another idea is a meat mixture seasoned like a spicy meatloaf. If you live in Italy, the latest issue of Sale e Pepe has a recipe for a meat stuffing for veal breast.

Then roll the flat thing up, tucking in any raggedy edges, until it is a nice rotund sausage shape and wrap it all around with the string. Tie it here and there, then cut off spare pieces of string and put them over there with the spare ribs.