Elk Ragu

Another reason why I love my friends... elk burger.

Roberto's moving back to San Diego! He went back to Tuscon to pick up all his stuff and his mom sent a few culinary delights. She sent a wonderfully smoked goose breast (consumed in SF during Outside Lands weekend), elk breakfast sausage (also consumed in SF), and ground up elk. Where'd the elk come from? Roberto's step dad shot it!

So there's a whole process to acquiring elk meat. Stepdad had to submit his name into a lottery for a permit. Purchase the permit without any guarantee that he's going to get an elk. Find the elk. Shoot it. Process it. Freeze it. Have Roberto put it in a cooler with dry ice and bring it out to me from AZ. Yes it was a process.

I'd never cooked elk before. I smelled it and it smelled gamey and bit musky. Stepdad recommended not cooking it like a burger but cooking it into a sauce or something. So I did exactly that... and made a ragu out of it.

So this one took some time. I wanted to make it as perfectly as I could, so I did everything the Italian way. Slowly. I was following the steps for making a Bolognese, but I wanted to keep the gaminess of the elk so I skipped adding the milk.

I used a combination of Carbons (purple) and Jean Flemmes (orange) heirloom tomatoes for the sauce. I even took the time to blanch the Jean Flemmes to peal the tough skin off them. I did dice up the purples with the skin to keep a nice amount of color contrast and texture between the two tomatoes.



While I was prepping those I softened some onion, garlic, and celery hearts in a pot with a pinch of salt and grape seed oil. I added the meat and allowed it to brown without ever frying it or letting it dry out. (Doing either will make the meat tough.) I had to keep a constant eye on the mixture making sure there was always a little bit of liquid in the pot. When the juices started getting low I added a glass of Sangiovese to the pot and allowed that to reduce. The aromas floating out of the pot was amazing.


Once the wine reduced I added in the chopped tomatoes with all the juices and waited. I made sure to keep a constant eye on the sauce, making sure that it slowly simmered and never rapidly boiled. A few times I even stuck the thermometer in there to make sure the liquid wasn't boiling over 200F. (I found that when you boil red meats you can avoid having a bitter, tough product by slowly and gently boiling it. It's like scratching a kitty just right to get a soft purr.)


After 3 and a half hours of simmering the result was:

HEAVEN

What? I know this sauce took a while, but I was hanging out at home all night blogging. The sauce all ended up in a jar and I'm hoping the flavor will still be there when I heat it up. I'm waiting for Roberto and Lina to get back so that we can all have it together. I'll probably serve it on Penne drizzled with a touch of black truffle oil. Tonight, I'll be enjoying the rest of the wine that didn't end up in the sauce.

August Update

Okay August has been a busy month for me. Well... since Coachella it's been a busy party summer for me minus the few weeks in July when I was studying for my GREs.

First weekend of August I was up in LA for Hard Summer then came down and processed all of my rabbits with the help of my very good friends the Jew, the Walleys, and their friend... Jonathan (here on referred to as the Hillbilly.) I had 13 rabbits weighing in at 2-2.5lb each. All the rabbits have been quartered up and I'm planning on making rabbit confit when my duck fat arrives in the mail. Dior made an amazing rabbit pate with pork belly, port, onions, herbs, and other goodness that was just CRACK! I wish I'd taken pictures of it before it was all consumed last weekend. I'll get the recipe from her.

So the second weekend of August (last weekend) I was in San Francisco for Outside Lands, which is a music, food, and wine festival at the Golden Gate Park. It was a fantastic time hanging out with friends, listening to great music, eating like kings and drinking great wine. Noteworthy places I've tried at the festival are Split Pea Seduction and the Fabulous Frickle Brothers truck. The best lamb sandwich by Split Pea and amazing fried pickles with an even more amazing mole dipping sauce by the Frickle Bros.

I had the lamb sandwich. I this picture while I was in line, and I ment to get a picture of the sandwich but it pretty much disappeared once it got in my hands.

Again... I managed to remember taking a picture but only once there was one left. The panko crust on them was sooooo good!

It was mostly cold in SF, but when it got warm Saturday I found a pretty slice of orange watermelon to quench my thirst... followed by several glasses of wine.

I can't wait to go back to San Francisco. We stayed inside the Presidio at the Baker Beach Apartments which had an amazing view of the bay. These apartments used to be military housing until the early 1990s when they were converted. My parents actually used to live in one of these units (possibly in the same strip of units we stayed in last weekend.) When I told my mom I was staying in the Presidio she told me we used to live on top of the hill. Up the steepest drive way on the block... which was our drive way for the weekend. Crazy.

View from the downstairs balcony.

I also got a chance to go up to Petaluma, CA and check out the Baker Creek Seed's "Seed Bank". I wish I'd gotten some pictures to share. The store's inside an old bank and it's like walking into their catalog. Hundreds of different seeds all alphabetized, and lots of magazines and books relating to urban homesteading and gardening. Definitely worth checking out.

But my favorite part adventure of the weekend was visiting the Wok Shop in Chinatown, San Francisco. I've been wanting a wok for a really long time, ever since a pledge taught me how to make fried rice a few years ago. I found the website while searching for the perfect wok and I've been wanting to check out the store since. The store offers over a dozen types of woks, so I was much relieved when the lady in the store was more than happy to give me her recommendations. She recommended going with the traditional round bottom cast iron wok. (If I ever move into a place with an electric stove, I'm screwed but from her experience she said it cooks Chinese food the way it was meant to be cooked! Who can argue with that.) So coming soon... stir fry action!

I got a 16" wok, a ring stand, a wok spatula, bamboo scrub brush (in the back left corner next to the stove), a steaming ring, steamers, a lid, and a skimmer. The long chopstick was complimentary. I'm hoping to make a Chinese housewife jealous of my set up here.

But my favorite part of the weekend was coming back to the apartment with Roberto, Lina, Ken D, Mr. Vickers, and Jelly Kelly after Sunday night's show. We had California grapes, peaches, pluots, and nectarines purchased along the 5 North on the drive up to SF. Along with several types of cheese, crackers, and rabbit pate. Bottles of wine. Grilled rabbit. Quinoa salad. Preserved eggplants. Zucchini Pickles. Fig jam (courtesy of Liberty Farms). We chatted, laughed, ate, and drank late into the night.

There is nothing better than being surrounded by friends you love eating good food.