4 posts tagged “bison”

One day your friend J tells you that she's craving bone marrow. The very next day Food Rockz, your newest & yummiest food blog find, blogs about marrow. Coincidence??? I think not. I take these signs seriously and as to not anger the Food Gods, I got right down to business.

Roast your bone marrow for about 30 minutes in a preheated 375 degree oven. Capers, parsley salad and toasted baguette are all you need to complete your unctuous little snack.

Use a little spoon/chopstick to scoop out the tasty marrow. I just love it when it comes out in one nice big chunk like that. Spread it onto your toasts and start salivating.

Top the toasts with a few capers and your parsley salad that's been dressed with lemon juice. Sprinkle with fleur de sel for some crunch and a salty counterbalance. Enjoy!

Put your bone marrow gloss on. :)

E-mail from my sister the week before Christmas:
"Hey Julie... You should be expecting a 22 lbs package on Tuesday."

I was flying home for the holidays, so she had been thoughtful enough to remember my disdain for checking luggage. I'll do anything to avoid it. My impatience. Get me in and out. Chop chop. But if you write "David Hasselhoff" all over your luggage you get it quicker. There's a story related to "the Hoff", but that's for another time and another blog. Back to the email. What could it be I wondered? 22 lbs? Quite a hefty load. I had been talking about lining the oven with terra cotta stones. An inversion machine, perhaps? After much thought, I emailed back, "Is it a bulldog puppy?" Fingers crossed. An apartment dweller can dream can't she? :)
Needless to say, it wasn't a bulldog. Not even close. Tuesday night came around and before my door appeared the said package. Removing the first brown box revealed a white Crate & Barrel box. Getting interesting now. I ripped the tape off to reveal (Hooray) a kitchen appliance. Cheer. Drum roll please... a 5-quart Crock Pot!!! How much more perfect can you get? I love kitchen appliances with a passion.
Crock pots are perfect for cooking all things low and slow. I had to think long and hard about what to make in my new toy. Vegetarian-wise, I could only think of beans and that just wasn't doing it for me. I wanted to be excited. And it was hard to be excited about beans when all I could think of was juicy, flavor infused, fork-tender, falling off the bone meat. There was my internal turmoil that lasted two seconds before I made up my mind and grabbed my bison short ribs out of the refrigerator. I browned them in my cast iron and braised them in a mixture of coffee, chicken broth, onions, garlic and maple syrup for six hours. I also threw in a few marrow bones for good measure. Think osso buco. A scoop of marrow on the meat, crunch of fleur de sel. Oh la la. C'est bon! That's heaven for me.
After much deliberation at the farmers' market, I purchased some Jerusalem artichokes, aka sunchokes. I've passed by them numerous times, but have never taken the bait. They're the knobby, gnarly roots of a wild sunflower. Honestly, they looked like a bitch to peel and that's why I had been avoiding them. See for yourself: The vendor swore to me up and down that this was not the case. All they needed was a good scrubbing, much like their tuberous cousins. I'm all about trying new things, so why not? I boiled them in salted water until tender and mashed them with just a pat of butter. I'm sad that I've been missing out on these for so long. They taste divine. They have a great creamy texture and a flavor reminiscent of mild artichoke hearts. They were also perfect for soaking up the savory bison marinade.

Good things: crock pots(and the sister that got it for you, duh)//meat on the bone//sunchokes//EATING

Since B was out of town camping for the weekend, I took this as the perfect opportunity to indulge in my carnivorous cravings (he's the true vegetarian out of the two of us. I'm just a wannabe). I have probably passed by the Lindner Bison stand at the Santa Monica FM a million times, but on this day, I was feeling particularly adventurous. I stopped by for a quick browse of the bison selection before heading East to stock up on the seasonal heirloom tomatoes. I perused a binder of bison recipes and was quickly taken by the Osso Buco made with pomegranate juice. This was the Saturday after the crazy thunder/lightning storm, so having something slowly braising would keep the apartment warm and cozy. Just what the weather called for. I browned the bison shanks and sauteed the vegetables in the bison drippings. Once the veggies were softened, I put the bison back into the pot and added one can of tomatoes and a cup of fresh pomegranate juice. Meat on the bone is always that much tastier and you just can't beat all those antioxidants in the pomegranate juice. I was feeling very good about this dish. I let it slowly simmer for six hours. The meat was falling off the bones tender and the sauce had become very complex (in a delicious sort of way) from the slow cooking and the creamy marrow of the bones. All it needed was some creamy herbed semolina to soak up the lovely sauce.
Since the weather was so crappy last weekend, as I mentioned earlier, B's camping trip got cut short by a day. Imagine my surprise when he walked through the door and I had a pot of bison braising away. I got caught red-handed. I felt like I had somehow betrayed him, so I made it up to him by coming up with this vegetarian alternative with a squash ragout. With warmed bellies and leftovers for days, this meal was a winner for both the carnivores and the herbivores.