Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I Suppose This Would Be Considered Northern Italian/Jewish Fusion

It's still Passover. I had some leftover ground bison meat, but no idea what to do with it. At first plan was to just make ragu and serve it over Passover (potato starch-based) pasta. Remembering past passover pasta experiences - the gumminess, the lack of flavor, the lack of texture - I decided to find something better. Lo and behold, it came to me. Spatzle. But how? you ask. Matzah balls, I say. I followed the recipe on the box of matzo meal for making said balls, with the addition of chopped fresh sage and thyme. Not having a proper spatzleizer, or the close substitute, a professional kitchen's perforated hotel pan, I used a broiler pan with holes in it, held atop a pot of simmering water. It worked pretty well at making tubewormesque matzo balls. As I am typing this, it's occurring to me that a pizza pan would have worked even better. That's the point of experimenting, though; you figure out what works and what doesn't though the process of doing and, more importantly, the process of thinking. The ragu was pretty straightforward. I simply browned minced carrot, celery, and onion (heavy on onion, light on the other) in a bit of oil, pushed it aside and browned the ground bison. Deglaze (that is, put in a flavorful liquid to get the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan, forming the base for the sauce) with a bunch of red wine, add some tomato puree/sauce/diced/crushed and simmer for a while. I also added a bit of chicken broth to rehydrate through cooking. Because bison is so tender, it needs not the long cooking of ground beef to make a silkily delicious ragu. Serve sauce atop "spatzle" for a Passover feast that one, is not from a box, and two, doesn't taste like Passover food.

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