Elk or Beef Short Ribs
Ingredients:
4 - 5 lbs of Yukon raised beef or elk ribs
4 organic onions
5 -6 cloves garlic
2 Litre water
1 Tab salt
4 - 5 bay leaves
Simmer the ribs for 2 - 3 hours with the onions, garlic, salt and bay leaves. Remove from heat and let cool so that the fat will rise and congeal on top of the broth. Remove the fat.
Drain ribs and retain the liquid. Place ribs in a baking dish. Cut up (in quarters) 2 - 3 more onions and place around the ribs. They will cook in the sauce and be tasty later. Make sauce for ribs:
Sauce:
1 cup organic ketchup (can use more if thicker sauce is desired)
5 Tab Worchestire sauce
6 Tab organic apple cider vinegar
2 tsp organic red paprika
1 tsp dry yellow ground mustard
5 - 6 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups of the retained liquid from cooking the ribs
salt and pepper to taste
Heat the sauce ingredients all together, then pour over the onions and ribs in baking dish.
Cook in 350F oven, covered for 45 minutes to 1 hours, then uncovered for another 30 minutes.
Osso Bucco
Osso Buco is the shank cut, or the lower part of the leg. It is often made into hamburger, but it is a delicious cut in its own right, when done properly.
Ingredients:
1 package as sold by Circle D Ranch - usually 2 - 3 lbs worth
2 - 3 large onions
5 -6 large cloves garlic
2 cups red wine
salt and pepper to taste
Put all ingredients in a large enamel heavy duty roaster or a slow cooker. Put in a low 225 F oven or set to slow cooker equivelant for 8 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes or rice and a large green salad and voila! Delicious! and easy.
Bone Both Basics
To make 1 gallon or so of beef bone broth:
5 lbs of mixed beef bones (some knuckles, some rib bones, some straight bones, they all have a different quality)
Onions, organic
Garlic
Apple cider vinegar, organic
Salt, good quality sea salt or Himalayan rock salt, no anti-caking agents or preservatives please!
Black peppercorns, organic
Bay leaves
Any other vegetable of choice like carrot or celery that would contribute to flavour , but you are going to discard after cooking.
To make it extra flavorful, you can roast the bones for 2 hours before boiling. Just put them in a 350F oven for a couple hours in a roasting pan, after sprinkling some good quality salt and pepper on them. After a couple hours, put them in a BIG pot (like canner size) and cover with about 1 1/2 gallons water, add 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, onions, garlic, bay leaves and bring to a boil. Then turn them down to simmer them for about 16 hours! This way all the goodness will be thoroughly leached out of the bones, and be in the liquid.
After 16 hours, remove from heat, and let cool. Skim off the fat and you can save it for some other use like if you need to fry something, or mix it with dry dog food for the dog, whatever. Discard the bones and the spent vegetables, and there you have a great base for all kinds of soups and hot consomme drink!
To make a gallon of chicken bone/meat broth:
Very similar to beef broth, but it doesn't need to cook as long. You can get away with a mere 8 hours of simmering.
Take the leftovers and carcass of 1 or 2 organic chickens and put in a large pot, cover with 1 or 1 1/2 gallon of water (depending on whether you have 2 carcasses or only one), the rest of the ingredients as above, and simmer for 8 hours. Let cool and skim the fat (save as this is delicious for frying things), sort thru the bones and discard them (I usually chop the knuckle ends off though to give to my dogs they love them) as well as the spent veggies. This is a great base for future soups and other delights.
German Meatballs
Special German Meatballs known as “Königsberger Klöpse”. This recipe comes from Robert, our German wwoofer in September 2013, who made this to great acclaim around the supper table.
This dish is delicious and is great served with mashed potatoes.
Recipe for 4 persons.
Ingredients for the meatballs:
1 kg ground beef
Salt
Pepper
Mustard (Dijon smooth) - 2 tablespoons
1 onion, fine chopped
2 eggs
Some chopped capers (1/3 of a 100 ml bottle)
Ingredients for the sauce:
Water from the boiled meatballs - about 6 cups
Salt
Pepper
Butter - 3 tablespoons
Lemon juice - 3 tablespoons
Capers (2/3 of the 100 ml bottle) and their liquid
3 heaping tablespoons of flour
Instructions:
Mix the ingredients for the meatballs together.
Form the meatballs about the size of a small snowball.
Boil salted water (start with 10 cups water).
Turn boiling water to a simmer and carefully place meatballs in water.
Simmer 40 min.
Fry 3 tablespoons of butter with 3 heaping spoons of flour (to make the sauce thicker).
Put some water from the meatballs into the pan.
Add pepper, salt, lemon, capers and the water from the capers into the sauce. The sauce must be a little bit sour and taste of capers and lemon.
READY TO ENJOY!!!
Brabantse Worstenbroodjes
This is a Dutch recipe from the Brabant region, and is well known there. Robin, from Holland, made it for us one cold wintry day, and it was warming and delicious.
Ingredients for dough:
500 grams unbleached organic white flour
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
2 cups water (approximately)
Method for dough:
Put all dry ingredients together and then ghradually add water , mixing all the while, until a stiff ball forms. Cover with plastic or a damp teatowel and let rise in a warm place for several hours.
Ingredients for filling:
400 grams minced meat (preferably half beef and half pork)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1/2 Tsp. nutmeg
Pinch of cloves
1 Tab. Dijon prepared mustard
Salt & Pepper to taste
Method:
Mix the minced meat with 1 egg, bread crumbs, nutmeg, ground cloves, mustard and pepper and salt to taste.
Divide the meat mixture into 12 balls.
Punch dough down and divide into 12 balls.
Roll them out into squares about 12 by 15 centimeters. Make meat balls into sausage shapes. Place a sausage into each dough square and then roll dough around the sausage. Then place on parchment paper, seam side down on baking tray.
Let rise for 15-20 minutes under a damp cloth in warm place. Heat oven to 200C or 390F. Whisk the other egg and brush the rolls with it.
Bake for 25 minutes until light brown.
Enjoy!
