Ok, planning this challenge was hard. I had so many ideas, and many involved pancetta and proscuitto, but that makes me a bit predictable. I love wrapping meat in proscuitto! (WE KNOW screams the crowd). I was thinking berries, prosciutto, and roasting.
When we got to the ostrich farm, we found that they only sell frozen meat. So I went with fillet steak rather than fillet roast, to make sure it had time to defrost. I already decided to serve it with onion gratin, roasted small potatoes, beans, mushrooms with a red wine sauce (thanks mum, you have such fab ideas!). What I didn't realise until last minute is that the mushrooms and red wine sauce would merge, and become something a little... outstanding.
So back to the difficulty of the 'challenge', it turned out to be not so much of a challenge at all. This is not the first time this has happened, but to be honest, the only 'challenging' piece of this exercise was sourcing the meat. Not to be confused with saucing the meat. See what I did there?
First, the onion gratin. Four red onions, light sour cream, garlic, thyme, white wine, and my favourite thing on the planet... Gruyère cheese. And parmesan. So I mixed up the garlic, onion and thyme to start, with a little olive oil. I ripped off a Jamie Olive recipe for this, but realised something quickly, his recipe has a major fundamental flaw. He didn't use enough cheese. Jeez Jamie, go easy on the olive oil, and add more cheese, how hard is it?!
Anyway, I roasted in a hot oven for a bit, covered in foil. Then removed foil, and chucked it back in to caramelize. Then added the sour cream and the cheese. Unlike Jamie, I chucked everything I had in it on the cheese front...Ridiculous.
Meanwhile, I was prepping the sauce. I soaked some dried porcini mushrooms in boiling water, and left them for about half an hour.
I then chopped em up, and used the liquid for the base of the sauce, and reduced by about half before adding red wine, and... well, some sugar. What can I say, it needed to be sweet and the berries were not here.
I had this simmering in the background for a spell, while I did other things, like prepped the potatoes, which I par boiled, then shook 'em round in the empty pan with some olive oil, and some (Australians, please don't judge me) chicken salt. Yes, thats right, chicken salt. But more on that later.
So I prepared the defrosted fillet. It had a big dirty bloody vein right though it so I had to get to work and sort that shit out. No one likes a big dirty vein in their meat, do they? To be honest this bit of meat reminded me of liver. And it kind of turned me off. Initially.
So the thing about ostrich is that its amazingly lean, and takes no cooking time at all. Plus, it doesn't shrink. What the...? So I cut this into two, and at the last minute, while everything was coming together, I chucked them on the hot skillet, with some salt and pepper, and olive oil (as instructed by the chatty lady at the farm).
They took 3 mins one side, 2 the other, and I took them off to rest under a strategically cut piece of aluminium foil. While that was resting, I steamed the beans and snow peas, and served up, balancing the rested ostrich fillet on top. More on the potatoes? The chicken salt rocked the party. Seriously. You cant make this stuff up.
And after a few bites?
I said it before... ridiculous. I was worried about the sauce, it wasn't as glazed as I would have liked, but oh dear, it was bloody delicious. Potatoes rocked, the crunchiness of the hot peas/beans were amazing, it added a contrast to the meal I wasn't expecting but pretty proud of. And the gratin? The gratin?! THE GRATIN WAS AMAZING!
So really, a pretty easy meal, with some timing talent, and rather impressive at the same time. This was a pleasure to cook and even more so to eat. I would highly recommend this to anyone, ostrich is sensational, so easy to cook and so lean. We will be visiting the farm again me thinks. Soon.
Ok, well thanks for those who voted and stuck with me to get here, apologies for the delay with the challenge. Until tomorrow, where everything goes back to normal... (or does it... stay tuned).. peace out. xx
ps thanks mum for your help with the brainstorming. Sometimes my lastminute.com organising pays off :)
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