No, that’s not a funny headline meant to draw you into some post about writing… that really is the recipe of the day!
We took the Geeky Kids shopping the other day, and while the Jr. Mad Scientist was deeply suspicious of the ‘exotic meats’ freezer, the Little Man enthusiastically picked out kangaroo meat to be his adventure in eating. We got a pound of ground “Roo, on sale for $7.99 (which, considering the price of beef recently, wasn’t all that terrible in a relative way).
Then came the fun part. How do you cook kangaroo? I started by asking Australian friends, who helpfully played along by letting us know that it would be very lean, and to treat it like I would venison. That was a big help. I surfed the web the way I usually do when I’m developing a new recipe, and came up with a website hosted in Australia, devoted to Kangaroo recipes. Here, I found the recipe for Spicy Roo Hot-Pots that I would modify.
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground ‘Roo
- 1 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced
- 1 large onion, diced finely
- 4 rashers (slices) bacon, chopped.
- 2 tbsp diced garlic
- 6 sheets filo dough
- 2 tsp hearty mustard (with seeds in is best)
- 1 stick (roughly 100 g) butter
- 1 1/3 c half and half
- 6 oz Apple Ale (beer or white wine would work too)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 4 tsp cornstarch
- add’l 4 tbsp melted butter
Instructions
- Fry the bacon in a heavy pot of dutch oven until crisp and the fat is rendered out. Add the stick of butter.
- Add the kangaroo meat and brown.
- Add in the onions, garlic, mushrooms and mustard, and saute until onions are transparent.
- Add the wine, half and half, and bring to a full boil.
- While waiting on the boil, put a little water in a cup and mix the cornstarch into this. As the sauce comes to a boil, pour it in slowly, mixing as you do.
- When the sauce thickens, remove from heat, taste, and salt & pepper.
- Ladle the mixture into heavy soup mugs or ramekins.
- Preheat oven to 375 deg F.
- On a sheet of wax paper, lay out a sheet of filo dough and brush it lightly with melted butter. Carefully lay a sheet on top of this one, repeat until all six sheets are done. Cut into quarters.
- Place one quarter on each cup or ramekin, tucking it in until it touches the mixture.
- Put the individual dishes on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan, and bake for 10-15 minutes until the tops are golden brown.
- Contents are lava. Allow to cool at least 10-15 min before eating.
While we were working on the recipe, we tasted some of the kangaroo meat after it was fully cooked, but before we added other ingredients. It’s faintly gamy, not even as strong as goat, and a touch sweeter than beef, which it is very similar to. My son pronounced it yummy. The Jr. Mad Scientist remained deeply, deeply suspicious.
This was a fun recipe to make. We’ll no doubt do it again, probably with boring beef, though. It reminded me a bit of stroganoff. I’m sure that the individual pots with edible lids raised the appeal to the kids by a huge factor, they really liked that. It would probably be easy to do with a recipe of pie crust, too.
The First Reader assessed them as being the same as they would have been had we used ground beef. The Jr. Mad scientist deigned to taste hers. Then, when her brother couldn’t finish his, she finished it for him.
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