getting to the heart of the matter

{heart meat I found on line}



So it turns out that the slab of Reindeer meat I received, via some old fashioned cold war style smuggling and with added internets googling, may not have been what I thought it was; I am grateful that I eat first, search later.

Picture this, I'm at home, Sunday night, enjoy a glass of Argentinian Cab-Merlot (no laughing, dump that Chilean shite and get on the Argentine band wagon NOW, quality has been way higher for the last ten years. This will impress your mates in next time in the "offie" or indeed and member of the opposite sex {or same sex or whatever}, it took a while, but gobshites in chile figured out after 60 years that the Merlot they where selling to all the petrol stations in Europe was actually Carmémére (a dry, tobacco tasting grape) and that the Argentinians had all the good stuff, what is known as old vine ( really, just old vines) Merlot from France. You can try Tilia cab sauv-merlot- from Dunnes Stores, a steal @ €6.49

What was I talking about? Oh yeah,Reindeer meat! So, picture the scene, Sunday night, I'm sitting at home watching the latest installment of Raw on RTE and they bring up Wicklow venison and I remember that I have that reindeer meat hanging around and as the wife is away

(Reindeer = Christmas, eating Reindeer = Heresy) so time for a bit of a nom...

Opening the packet came with a satisfying hiss a guarantee of quality. The meat itself had the texture, colour and malleability of a hard bar of toffee, though the smell, the smell of the smoked salted meat, left me a little confused. I'll go out on a limb and say sea salt and Ash wood used in the smoking, not oak, it had a sweeter smell than oak wood, like hazel nuts. I stand there bending it, flexing, smelling, wondering what is this going to taste like?

I take out a good carving knife and saw into the middle, saw being the word here. I was reminded of the old 10p Big Time Bars, a hard toffee, chocolate coated bar. The meat resisted the bite of the blade and after a bit of effort I could procure a slice from the middle.

It tasted, it tasted like iron, not iron girders but the watery kind. It did have a nice flaky meat texture, like venison, lean, not too chewy, but tasted of smoke and iron. Really it tasted like blood, it was like when you bite the inside of your cheek after taking a drag of a cigarette and then everything tastes, well, like blood and smoke. Dark blood. It was exciting... that iron tang, the unknown factor of where it came from ( some where in Sweden), it was, exciting.

I looked up smoked reindeer meat online and couldn't get a match for what I had eaten, until I saw this (third image down). My dealer had, I am now left to believe, supplied me with a chunk of salted / smoked reindeer heart. This goes a long way to explaining the taste of iron, and the dark blood red colour, now I think of it it may explain the shape and the texture.

Rudolph heart, Donner and Blitzen! to coin the German phase, heart meat! I was ready for shank, hock or ear, but heart, well heart takes some heart to eat.

I have eaten dried smoked meat before: beef and turkey jerky, and also Biltong, (smelled like feet) which what I expected this to taste like. But what I got was a tender, tasty meat, with a very definite tang, the best way to simulate the taste would be to smoke a Gauloises blonde, bite your cheek and eat some fudge...

Over all nice and lean, long after taste, tender and tasteful, tough and delicate, like Clive Owen/Julianne Moore, and as exciting taste wise, but not for the faint of HEART!

I will be passing this out among the brave hearted (!) over the next few days, if you want to try it give me a shout.

***

3 stars

Up the dates

I will be eating the fabled reindeer meat soon, and will post accordingly.

P.S.

if you are in the market for a double cheese burger, go fo the burger king €2 euro one, it is a veritable Nigella Lawson, avoluptuous entertainer with a sexy bite, over the MacDonald's Sienna Miller, flat sameness with zero personality.

nom noms out.

sporking from the hip

Well, we have made it through Christmas, and I'm sure we all ate the same shite we eat every year; 1 giant tin of roses, 1 giant tin of quality srteet, the nice double centers ( the crap ones are just confectionery political correctness ) , 1 Giant turkey + 1 Giant ham, enough gin to drown the entire East India Company... etc. etc.

Let's back to business;

THE ROLL ROLL

I have discussed this before, and I finally set out to explore a depraved state in which pork can be prepared.

The Roll Roll is a creature of legend, something people whispered to me in darkened car parks, a lament from an old drunk upstairs on the nitelink, mumbled nonsense from a hungover student suffering through a day of their part time job.

The contents of the "item" is a series of hot sausage rolls from a shop hot counter in a Cuisine de France bread roll.

The concept is that it cost less than €2 and is packed with enough stodge to either kill you ( which it will, inevitably ) or make you stronger.

WARNING : THIS IS A HANGOVER FOOD ONLY AND SHOULD BE HANDLED WITH CARE.

The setup; so you go into a Londis, where you can pick up a 2 large sausage rolls, not the giant ones, that my friends is a gripe for another post, for €1.25, and insert these, after you have left theshop to avoid frighting the staff, into a the aforementioned bread roll, ( .75C). Garnish with ketchup from you pocket which was left over from the previous nights McDonald's drunken euro saver menu madness and bobs your monkey! THE ROLL ROLL!

The play; right so, I was hungover and heading to a friends house, I said to meselves that a roll roll beckons. However I was nowhere near a londis/spar. In fact I was in outer greater Dublin suburbia and the only thing at hand was a SupaValu. So I figured, "same difference" and set about finding the hot counter. Which was empty. One quick phone call later I had established that the establishment for which I was to head possessed a microwave, deal done, time for aMacgyver on this one.

The concept is be as cheap as possible, so .85c for 4 small ( this was the price then in Dec. prices may vary given the fact that Musgraves are shitehawkes ) sausage rolls and .70c for a roll,

Back to the gaf and it gets better, my friend had been exploring the endemic red sauces which reside at the bottom of taste value, this was truly a gift from the gods! A quick ding o' the 'wave and a crack of the roll I had meselves ready for another taste experience for the good of the people who read this. Lathering it in Kandee tomato Ketchup , a firm fav. flash back to 1986, when nuclear waste was in the air, Phil Lynott died and the ever controversial Peter Robinson invaded Monaghan.

Critics response; Actually it was alright, very doughy, dry, the vinegar tang from the suace broke up the otherwise monotonous carb. fest. The hot spicy sausage meat was not unpleasant but felt a little to moist for a true pork pleasure. On the whole it was warm and filling though a little on the tough side, not one for our false toothed friends. In spite of myself I began to wonder what the true roll would taste like, what with that golden skin of pastry, heat lamp dried meat and the heady Taxi fumes from the puke stained streets of the metropolis of a Sunday morn.

Over all then

**|

2.5 stars, though edible, not nutritious, not one of your 5 a day nor advisable if pregnant/heart condition/celiac.

If you are brave, and broke, and curious by all means give it a shot!You can do as I have done and either make it yourself, buy one in a shop, or the best may just be the morning after one of those god awful family get together's when auntie ( fill in blank ) made five thousand cocktail sausage rolls and your mother still has loads of little dinner rolls left over from the potato salad and ham jamborees they have at these things and you have a stinking hangover and a house full of cousins whose names you can't remember because they are so distantly related to as have been from a different genus. Just think of me smiling out at you from the interwebs as you slap one of these babies together for instant carbohydrate awesomeness.