Anzac day dinner. Sous vide kangaroo and lup cheong with bolognese sauce and sweet potato noodles.
Sous vide kangaroo with Chinese sausage sweet potato noodles ‘bolognese’
It’s ANZAC day. Ideally, I’d accompany my kangaroo with a kiwi but I couldn’t find one. I assume a kiwi’s neck is easy to break and it can be dunked in boiling water and plucked like a chicken. I’d probably roast it like a chook.
In the absence of a kiwi, I thought I’d create a fusion dish with some Chinese sausage aka Lup Cheong. While not on the side of the allies, an Italian influence with a Bolognese sauce would make this a three-way fusion dish.
Celeriac mash is a new love of mine. I’ve been making it a little recently to enjoy with steak. I was on Twitter earlier today and my friend, Zena, mentioned she was keen to try mac and cheese made with brie, parmesan, and blue cheeses. Given I’m low carb living at the moment, I thought I’d try three cheeses with my Vegemite celeriac mash. I call it my Easter tri-cheeses Vegemite celeriac mash.
I still want to make a mac and cheese with brie. Just alone to see what it tastes like. That and maybe blue cheese and parmesan mixed with it next time.
I’ve never been fond of breasts, I’ve always been keen on thighs. I find breasts dry and stringy, even when people tell me they have great breasts I’m usually disappointed. Thighs, however, rarely disappoint me. Thighs are succulent, juicy and moist without any of the dry stringiness of breasts.
I was recently challenged by my blogger friend, Mabel Kwong, to try to prepare breasts and make them as succulent, juicy and moist as thighs.
Well, until recently, I thought it would be impossible, but now that I am cooking sous vide, I may be able to find out if I can make breasts as well as thighs.
I mean I have my MEATER wireless meat thermometer, but in my mind, a meat thermometer is more for safety rather than texture and mouthfeel. I could poke my MEATER wireless meat thermometer into a breast and cook it precisely using the app until the internal temperature reaches the safe point for a breast. Such an approach wouldn’t necessarily guarantee a soft, tender, moist, and juicy breast.
The one disappointment though with this challenge is that I couldn’t find a breast with the bone in and skin on. I know I could have bought a whole bird and dissected out the breasts and thighs but I didn’t want to buy a whole bird. I wonder if dissecting out the breast can be called a mastectomy, I expect not. Dissecting out the maryland though, I reckon could be regarded as a hindquarter amputation.
So for this challenge, I used a breast sans skin and bone along with a thigh with bone in and skin on.
The cooking conditions I chose were 60 °C (140 °F) for three hours which should successfully pasteurise the flesh of harmful microorganisms.
The most common microorganisms of concern are Salmonella and Campylobacter. Both are pathogenic enteric bacteria which can cause not only diarrhoea but severe abdominal pain which presents as colic, along with fever and occasionally in severe infections, especially in immunocompromised persons, bacteræmia. Campylobacteriosis is also associated with arthritis and Guillain Barré Syndrome. Salmonellosis also has its share of nasty post-infectious problems too. It’s really important to ensure your meat is pasteurised and you handle your meat with tender loving care.
This advice goes for all forms of poultry.
If you read my recipe on sous vide kangaroo, you’ll also know there are concerns about parasites too.
It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a rack of lamb. Yes, a whole rack of a lamb. Indeed, it’s been a long time since I’ve bought lamb cutlets or even lamb chops. You see, in Australia, baby sheep, i.e., lamb, is really expensive. It never used to be that way. Back when I was a boy, lamb meat was cheap. It was what we ate a couple of times a week because chops and cutlets were cheap, fatty and tasty. These days you may pay the GDP of a small country for lean fat-free lamb that lacks taste and flavour. After all, all the flavour is in the fat. I hate the way supermarket butchers trim away all the fat. They should leave that for the customer to make the choice. I don’t particularly care that some people don’t know how to dissect away fat, it’s not hard to learn skills these days. If all the fat was left on the meat I’d happily cook the meat with the fat on and enjoy all the extra flavour.
Can you believe lamb costs $32.50 per kilogram, for readers in the USA, that’s about $16 per pound.
I attended a lecture on Tuesday night about planetary health and the notion that the earth and its inhabitants are currently emerging from the holocene epoch and entering the anthropocene epoch or geological age. Apart from the obvious remedies, the notion of eating more vegetables and more sustainable protein sources was mentioned with kangaroo being described as an earth and human-friendly source of protein. I murmured that’s all very well but kangaroo tastes disgusting. People turned around and berated me. I wondered if any of them had tasted a decent steak or pork crackling or lamb cutlet.
Then it dawned on me that in my current ‘sous vide epoch’ I should try to sous vide some kangaroo.
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