Weekend Dinners, Pt. 1

…And speaking of time (and not only lack of it), timing is everything when cooking a menu. Generally, cooking a dish, even a complicated one, doesn’t represent a challenge even for a chef of modest experience; cooking starters, mains and a dessert and serving them all hot, the pasta al dente, and the steaks just right is a lot more likely to cause problems, and then you also want to be able to enjoy the food and the company.

Of course, thing’s will be easier if you have two chefs (like we had here) or if you can cook in between courses. It’s best to prepare everything you can beforehand, so it’s easier if you plan the menu the previous day. Setting the table should be done first.

Menu

Snails with Blue Cheese

Slow-braised Lamb Shanks in Red Wine
Oven Root Vegetables
Green Beans

Pear Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream

The lamb was going to be in the oven for at least two hours, so it was the first thing to get going. Brown the lamb in butter on a frying pan, adding salt and pepper.

 

 

 

Butter an oven pan. Peel and halve the shallot onions, peel the garlic cloves and put in the pan. Add the browned shanks and pour the red wine and add meat or vegetable stock until covered. Add a couple of rosemary sprigs. Put in the oven (200°C).

 

 

Prepare the pear pies. Mix wheat flour, sugar and butter (1:1:1). Don’t knead too much.

Individual portion pans are easier with this course, as cutting and transferring the slices onto another plate with this pie isn’t always easy. Press the dough to a 5 mm layer at the bottom of the pan. Add half a cubed pear, a little lime or lemon juice and a little cinnamon. Put in the refrigerator.

Potatos and yellow root go in next. Peel and cut in quarters or eighths. Put on a buttered pan, add olive oil, honey or maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Fry until tender (which is about an hour, or 15 minutes more than we did!)

You can cover the pan for half of the time.

 

Then snails. The queue to the cheese counter was about 25 people, so we stuck with Bleu D’Auvergne for the snails. Rinse the snails and fry on a pan with a knob of butter and a little pepper. Put some butter in the snail pans, add the snails and a little blue cheese on top, and fry until the cheese starts to brown. (Our oven started to get quite crowded at this point…)

 

The snails here might have needed a teaspoon more of the butter, but they were great nonetheless… Bleu D’Auvergne worked just fine. Serve with champagne/sparkling wine and white bread for cleaning the pan!

 

 

 

Steam the green beans, add a little butter.

Put the potatos and yellow root at the bottom, add the shanks, onions and garlic. Put the beans on top. Serve with a cabernet or pinot noir.

 

 

Put the pear pies into the oven before starting the main course. Turn the heat down to 150°C. They should be done by the time you’ve finished your lamb. The bottom starts picking up caramel flavors at the same time the pears start to brown. (The one in the picture here is maybe a little too brown.)

With two table spoons, form a ball out of the vanilla ice cream, lay on top and serve.

Ingredients

Snails with blue cheese

1 can of snails (6 per person)
Blue cheese
Butter
Pepper
White bread for serving

Lamb in Red Wine

1 kg of lamb shanks (3 per person)
1/2 bottle (375 ml) red wine
Shallot onions and garlic cloves (3 per person)
Stock (vegetable or meat)
Rosemary sprigs
Butter
Salt, Pepper

Yellow Root and Potatos

Potatos (2 per person)
Yellow root (2 per person)
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Honey or maple syrup
Salt, pepper

Pear Pie

Flour, sugar, unsalted butter (one part each; I think we used about 100 grams each for four pies)
Pears (1/2 per pie)
Cinnamon
Lemon or lime juice
Vanilla ice cream

Eat the Ostrich

The first time I ever had ostrich was right where these round, flightless, tiny-brained and hugely sympathetic birds come from: in Africa. Ever since then, the culinary world has seen an ostrich boom, and by now it has become a common alternative to the other well-known types of red meat.

Rich in proteins and iron and low in fat (1–2g per 100g of meat), the fat that it has mostly consists of polyunsaturated fatty acids (as compared with saturated fats, in case you’re hysterical with the types of fat you’re stuffing down). This means it’s healthy. Not only is the nutritional content ideal, but its short muscle fibers also allow for much easier digestion. The high glycogen content also makes the flavour of ostrich quite sweet, and thus creates a perfect contrast with vegetables or rocket.

Add to this the fact that with its tiny head dangling at the end of its thin neck, and its huge body (about 90–130 kg) held in the air by its straw-strength legs, it looks like it’s the walking meat factory of the bird species, whose looks just scream “eat me!” (Although the meat yield is actually quite low, which has kept the price relatively high.) For me, ostrich was the first bit of red meat I’d had in eight years.

Fast forward to a couple of years later, to Montreal, Canada. I had ostrich in two different restaurants, both BYOB – bring your own bottle, as is customary there. Two very different approaches, the other one very rustic and old-fashioned, the other one modern and stylish. Both delicious. I was sold.

Ostrich with Endives (serves 2)

300g Ostrich Fillet
3 Endives
1dl Cream
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
1 tbsp Corn Starch for thickening

Boil the endives in salted water, outer green leaves removed, until just done. Cut in half. Dry. Cut the ostrich in 1cm slices. Heat the olive oil on pan. Quickly fry the slices with the endives. Add the cream and the thickening. Boil until thickened. Serve with some South African red wine to make the birdy feel at home.