Emu Egg - Scrambled

After recently eating emu salami and emu tenderloin, I was given an emu egg by Anshu Pathak of Exotic Meat Market. This was completion of a nice little emu era. I've eaten emu egg before, but it was years ago. 

My initial thought was to try and cook it sunny-side up, or perhaps even over-easy. So I got a large wok pan and got some butter sizzling in it. Then I cracked open the emu egg and got the egg innards into the pan. Then the reality of what I intended to do over-whelmed me and I made a quick decision to go for an emu scramble. I could see no other way of getting that huge emu egg yolk to warm up enough to make it semi-edible (I'm not into eating raw egg yolk). 

Yeah, the thought of eating that under-cooked did not do anything for me. The brown around the edges is cooked butter.

So a quick foray into the fridge brought me some already cooked veggies (mushrooms, broccoli, squash, red pepper) and some blue-cheese crumbles which I added into the emu egg and began whipping it into a mixture. It cooked up nicely. The yolk to egg-white mixture in an emu egg is much greater than in a chicken egg. In fact, an emu egg is 44% yolk and 55% white, while a chicken egg is 35% yolk and 65% white. The white is also more viscous (thick, sticky) than a chicken egg because it has less water (67% versus 75%) - see this great article at Emu's Zine. It also notes that the emu egg is the equivalent of ten chicken eggs. 

In the pan, ready to eat. 

The result was a nice huge scramble. 

Moose - Bottled and Canned

I have a friend who married someone from New Foundland, Canada and it turns out that New Foundland is over-run by moose. It didn't used to be that way. New Foundland was originally moose-less, but in 1904 four moose were introduced to the island to encourage tourism through sport hunting and today that original herd has grown to 150,000, one of the highest densities of moose in North America. It has come at a cost - there are about 600 car collisions with moose each year and their eating habits are destroying native habitat. A Wall Street Journal article from 2014 reported that wildlife officials are so anxious to harvest the moose that national park officials flew hunters into Gros Morne National Park and then picked up the hunters and their bagged moose free of charge. One hunter stated it was, "Like going to a fish pond and catching trout." 

This moose was photographed at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center south of Anchorage. 

As a result moose meat is a staple on the island and my friend's husband grew up eating moose that his mother bottled and canned. His mother visited him recently from New Foundland and brought some bottled and canned moose which they shared with me. Of course, I was thrilled. 

The canned moose was a little more dense and stiff, as other canned meat I've tasted can be. It was not gamy at all. If I'd been told it was beef I would not have questioned it at all. When warmed up in a microwave it softened right up and was much better. 

Home-canned moose from New Foundland.

A peek inside the opened can.

Canned moose pieces.

The bottled moose was less dense and less stiff. It had a much nicer mouth-feel, had no gaminess and was frankly, just wonderful. It also was better warmed up in a microwave, but I would be happy eating it cold out of the bottle. 

Home-bottled moose.

Home bottled moose pieces.

This helped re-confirm that moose is one of my favorite wild meats and one that I would love to fill my freezer with. 

Water Buffalo Tongue - Pureed

Exotic Meat Market recently slaughtered a water buffalo and are offering the meat for sale. I've had a water buffalo ribeye and mozzarella made from water buffalo milk and both are excellent. C. c. Claudia gave us some water buffalo tongue that was very much like a pate. 

As I understand it Claudia pureed the tongue in a blender (presumably after boiling it first) and added spices including jalapeno and red pepper. The texture and taste were pate-like and the peppers added some subtle heat and crunch that was marvelous. 

Emu Tenderloin - Sous Vide

The emu, found in Australia, is the second largest bird, after the ostrich, and is flightless, like the ostrich. We saw some at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center outside Dallas and got to watch and feed them from our car. I fell in love with them. 

Emu at Fossil Rim.

Emu poking its head in our car window. 

Despite my interest in unusual meats for years, I'd never eaten emu meat until I recently tried emu salami. I was intrigued by the dark color of the salami and decided I needed to buy a good cut of emu meat to see if it really was that dark. So I got some emu tenderloins from Exotic Meat Market. Anshu Pathak, the proprietor, raises emus, but he is not currently harvesting the meat from his own emus, he's still building up his mob (yes, a group of emu is called a "mob"). 

Raw emu tenderloins.

The emu tenderloin is a thick strip of meat cut from between the emu's breasts. When the emu is alive the tenderloin does not get much of a workout and so the tenderloin is particularly tender. And like the salami, it is very dark. 

rub with love Triple Garlic, a gift from a friend, was a terrific marinade and went well with the emu.

The first site that comes up when googling "cooking emu", which I looked up after the fact, recommends  cooking emu meat to between 150 and 160 degrees F (66 to 71 C). That seems way too high to me. The picture of the cooked meat that site shows is a light pink. I cooked the tenderloins sous vide at a temperature of 53 degrees C for just a little under four hours. I coated the meat with olive oil, salt and pepper and added rub with love Triple Garlic Teriyaki Sauce, three pieces of pickled ginger and a spoon full of minced garlic. 

The tenderloins after cooking in the sous vide.

Frying the tenderloins in butter.

The fried tenderloin.

After removing the tenderloins from the sous vide bag, I fried them for a short period of time on each side in a hot skillet with butter. I loved the fried outer flavor and the inside was still very rare, which I liked. I think Judy would have preferred hers cooked to a higher temperature. 

Nice red center.

I really liked it. If I cook it again, and I would like to, I might soak it in a combined brine and marinade for an hour or so, which would loosen the meat up just a bit. 

Piece with extra marinade and garlic.

Wild Boar Frenched Ribs - Sous Vide Taste Test

I got a wild boar frenched rib rack from Exotic Meat Market and decided to do a taste taste using three different mixes of ingredients in the sous vide preparation and then comparing those sous vided ribs, as-is, with the same ribs then fried in butter. A "frenched" rib is a rib where the meat and fat have been cut off the bone so that it is exposed. I had my friend Jerry with me who hunts wild boar and his given me wild boar meat in the past. 

This is Jerry with a wild boar he shot in Central California. However, he was not the source of this meat. 

The frenched rib chops

It was an absolutely beautiful piece of meat. I used a large knife to cut the rack into individual chops. I did not marinade or brine the meat, it didn't need it.

The ribs sliced into chops and stacked on a plate.

My first packet of ribs was coated in olive oil, salt and black pepper, with added rosemary, oregano and minced garlic. I put it in the sous vide for 2 1/4 hours at 56 degrees centigrade. We ate one chop directly out of the sous vide. The sauce was nice tasting and the chop was good. I heated up a frying pan quite hot and added butter until it was getting dark, then added chops for about 30 seconds on each side. It was amazing what the frying did. The texture was more firm, but incredibly, the chop was more tender, easier to cut into and to chew. It was also juicier and had more flavor. Jerry and I both agreed that the fried chop was superior. It appears that frying causes several changes in the meat. First, if fried at a hot enough temperature (about 154 degrees), a chemical reaction between the amino acids in the protein and some sugars, called the maillard reaction, or caramelization, creates a crispy brown surface on the meat. Second, the frying melts the fat, beginning at about 130 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The sous vide was at 56 degrees Centigrade which is 132 degrees Fahrenheit, so the frying melted more of the fat.

These chops are just out of the sous vide.

Several of them were then fried in butter at a very hot temperature.

The fried chop is to the right.

A look inside each.

The second packet was cooked at the same temperature and the same length of time. The meat was coated with olive oil, salt and pepper, then Mirin sweetened saki, ginger and garlic sauce and chopped ginger were added. The resulting broth was very sweet. Again, we both liked the fried version best, but I fried this batch a little longer and did not like it as well as the first batch. The meat was a little less juicy.

The fried chop is below.

A look inside each (fried to the right).

The third packet was cooked at the same temperature, but 25 minutes longer. Olive oil, salt and pepper were added to the meat as well as cayenne pepper, Heinz 57 and Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que Sauce. Again, the fried meat was best and this was actually both of our favorite of the three batches, a surprise for me. I made sure not to fry it as long and the sauces worked real well with the meat.

Fried is above.

The inside (fried is to the right).

These were wonderful chops and I would love to have them again. The taste comparison was very helpful in terms of my better understanding how the frying changes the meat. 

Emu Salami

I've been so impressed with the salami sold by Exotic Meat Market that I had to try some more. Next was a meat I've not tried: emu. I've had emu egg, but never emu meat. 

An emu at Fossill Rim Wildlife Center outside Dallas. The emu is the second largest bird and can weigh up to 130 pounds. 

I was shocked to see how dark it is. I anticipated light meat, like a turkey or goose. But it was nearly as dark and purply looking as the river otter salami. 

This is all part of one stick of emu salami. 

A few weeks later I had to buy some emu tenderloin to confirm that the emu meat was really that dark (a later post will cover that). 

Emu tenderloins.

The emu salami was stronger tasting than the emu tenderloin, par for salami in general, but the flavor is good and not over-powering. 

Finger Lime

One of the most creative people we know is C. c. Claudia. Claudia grows unusual plants and different kinds of fruit and makes fruit and flower arrangements that are spectacular (see this beautiful box of yuzu she gave us). She recently gave me some finger limes, something I've never heard of. 

Finger limes in a small green bag - perfect for St. Patrick's Day.

I found that the finger lime is listed as one of the 1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die, a book edited by Frances Case, page 108.  It is called "lime caviar" because it has little caviar-like vesicals that look like fish eggs, but are little balls of citrus fruit that taste of lime juice, complete with the caviar-like "burst" when you crush them in your mouth. Their color can range from black, to purple, to green, to yellow, to red. 

The whole finger lime (mid-left), lime caviar (bottom-right) and a finger lime cut lengthwise (upper-right).

They originated in the coastal regions of Queensland and New South Wales, Australia and grow on a thorny shrub or small tree. I've seen video of cutting them in half and watching the lime caviar ooze out. These were not quite as ripe, but the lime caviar came out when the fruit was squeezed.