We got skunked on the Colorado elk hunt this season, but Gurlfren’s dad sent us home with several packages of frozen meat from last year’s hunt. I’d never eaten elk before, much less cooked it, so the process of figuring out how to prepare it was a fun challenge.

These medallions were marked backstrap meat. Hmm… what’s that? A little internet research reveals it’s from the loin of the animal, what we’d anthropomorphically call its lower back. Check. So it’s a tender muscle that can be cooked quickly over high heat. Right. Now what?

The butcher trimmed these raw crimson medallions a bit less than 2 inches thick, and sliced a pocket into it suitable for a stuffing. Backstrap meat has very little external fat and no marbling, and barely any connective tissue: very much like a beef filet mignon. Really lean meat.

So how do I approach this? That pocket called for a big wad of herb butter made with finely minced parsley and sage from my garden. As the steak cooked, the butter melted gently and infused the lean meat with herbs. I crusted the outside of the steak with cracked black pepper & salt, seared quickly in a hot pan for a couple minutes on each side, then tossed the pan in a 400 degree oven to roast for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I started a couscous for the starch component of the meal. Finely dice carrots & celery and add them to boiling chicken broth, and let simmer until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the couscous, cover and let it sit for ten minutes to steam. Easy.

Does elk steak need a sauce? It couldn’t hurt. We brought back a locally made Colorado wine made from sour cherries. It tastes like a barely sweetened cherry pie filling, with a big fruity nose and a bitter / tart cherry flavor. When I first tasted it, I immediately thought it will make a great sauce, and it did. To add more dimension to the sauce, I bought some frozen sour cherries at my local Persian supermarket.

I pulled out the medium-rare steaks from the oven and rested them on a warm casserole while I prepared a sauce using the same pan. I deglazed the pan with chicken stock, and reduced about a cup of it to a syrup consistency. I then added roughly a cup of cherry wine and the thawed, pitted cherries and reduced again to a thick glaze. Season to taste at the end. Simple, and not overwrought.

While the cherry sauce reduced I started a sage brown butter on another burner. Melt butter over a low-medium heat, add whole fresh sage leaves until the milk solids turn brown and the sage crisps nicely. Drain off the butter and sage leaves, and reserve it. To this pan, I threw in sugar snap peas and parboiled fresh fava beans (also from the Persian market), and sauteed over medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper, and add back the browned butter at the very end as a sauce.

Verdict: elk is delicious, and not at all gamey as I expected. It’s almost like beef with a firmer texture and a slightly stronger flavor. Considering the distances these large animals migrate in the wilderness, that makes perfect sense.

Sorry I didn’t keep track of the ingredients, so no recipe for this one. For me, half the fun of cooking is envisioning the final outcome and improvising a way to get there. For the next session of You Kilt It, Now Eat It, we tackle a frozen lump of elk roast and try not to screw that up too much.

Diplomacy starts at breakfast. We’d live in a much better world if we could accept other nations’ concepts of breakfast. After chowing down on someone else’s idea of good meal, we could attempt to tackle heavier differences of opinion.

Most Europeans think peanut butter is disgusting. Americans look with suspicion as Brits spread Marmite on their toast, even though we have no idea what it is. The Brits look at Vegemite, the Aussie analog, as a weak substitute for the “real” thing. We sneer across the ocean at each other like we’re smearing excrement on our breakfast, and I gotta say: don’t be hatin’. It’s only a toast spread.

Australia vs. England

An Aussie gave me a tube of Vegemite on my bike tour this past summer. (Thanks, David!) They pack it in convenient tubes so travelling Aussies can spread the love overseas. Of all the Americans David shared this tube with, I was the only one who liked it.

Curiously, we had two Brits on the bike tour. When I asked them if how Marmite was different from Vegemite, they acted as though it was vastly different. Is it? I had to see. I picked up a jar at the local Cost Plus World Market to find out.

They’re both yeast extract pastes made from the spent sludge that settles out during the beer brewing process. Brewer’s yeast is high in vitamin B, so these pastes were marketed as a nutritional flavor supplement in the famished years of the Big Wars. For a traditionally flavor-challenged cuisine like England’s, I’m not surprised this markedly improved palatability. [ed - oh, I’m sorry, I was supposed to be diplomatic]

Texture wise, think brown wallpaper paste. Flavor wise, think really salty brown wallpaper paste. Vegemite isn’t quite as strong, that’s true. It doesn’t leave stinging salty welts on my tongue like Marmite. Vegemite includes malt extract, so it has a rounder, mild malty sweetness that I prefer.

As if to prove that even bad press is good press, the Marmite company has two separate websites for both lovers and haters of its product. There are links to fan websites like the Marmite FAQ, which show photos like this. I’m speaking as an American again, and this is just wrong:

Photo courtesy the Marmite FAQ

The Vegemite website admits that their product took almost 15 years to gain acceptance in Australia. When you’re pitching one brand of dead yeast paste against another, these things take time.

I figure I’ve done my small part for global diplomacy already. First, I introduced Gurlfren to natto, and she loves the stuff. Now, I’ve adopted Vegemite into my breakfast repetoire. Some foreign born person walks the streets of America right now, waiting to try grits for the first time. Don’t screw it up by taking them to Denny’s. Make it with love, butter, and little bit of good cheese, and spread the joy of a uniquely American breakfast food.

Our band of itinerant eaters stopped for a night on the border of Maine and New Hampshire to visit Marlene’s cousin Anne and her family. Their small town home is surrounded by creeks and canals that feed the estuaries around Portsmouth. In their neighborhood remains well preserved textile mills from the 19th century and an old countinghouse that monitored commerce on the ancient canals.

Anne, Zach, McGill and Grace keep hens that provide their eggs. We fried them sunnyside up for breakfast in a bit of butter. I’d never had eggs this fresh before, and was shocked at how rich the yolks tasted compared to commercial eggs. Perhaps it’s the diet of kitchen scraps their hens eat, but fresh backyard eggs are definitely superior.

Green eggs from Araucana hens, the small one on left is from a bantam hen

In this place of strong traditions and historical continuity, people still fish the salt creeks for shad in the spring and pick wild summer berries in the woods as countless generations before them have done. Vainly dodging bloodthirsty horseflies, deerflies and mosquitoes is another timeworn woodland tradition we didn’t care for, so we opted out of that wild blueberry adventure and instead crossed the state line to Saltbox Farms to fill up on the domesticated variety.

Diaphanous dragonfly

Red and golden raspberries

Domesticated blueberries

Saltbox Farms
321 Portsmouth Ave
Stratham, NH
603-436-7978

We chose Saltbox Farms in part because a county fair was open right down the street. Unlike my local (suburban) Orange County Fair, which features vendors hawking hot tubs and home mortgages as soon as you enter the grounds, the folks in Stratham County take their animal husbandry very seriously. In the rabbit pavilion, they held a bunny hurdling contest, where handlers nudge their leashed rabbits to hop over a series of wooden obstacles that increase in height with each round. For reals - I’m not making this up. Think I’ll find this sport at this month’s Los Angeles County Fair?

Shady carny rides and French fries

Happy potato chip eating goat

After a long afternoon of driving, we arrived at Matt’s childhood home outside of Albany, NY, where his retired parents have a beautiful 18th century farmhouse. His dad Richard is a beekeeper, and mom Marianne keeps the garden beautifully well tended. We picked red currants from her bushes, and she made us raspberry and currant jam to take home: flavors and memories of our summer vacation to savor months from now.

Homegrown currants

Richard harvests honey seasonally from different flowers in bloom at the time. His early summer honey tastes lighter than the dusky, late summer variety. Fantastic honeys with great character. A more complete post about his honey coming at some point.

Have I punished you enough with vacation pictures? DiFara’s pizza and chocolates from Jacques Torres in Brooklyn coming next!

I found green almonds for sale this week at Irvine’s Wholesome Choice, a great Persian owned supermarket with an excellent produce section. Not as extensive and exotic as the Berkeley Bowl or Austin’s Central Market, but far better than most in Orange County. If you want to play the “my supermarket can beat up your supermarket” game, we’ll have to step outside…

Having started phase one of the South Beach diet after last weekend’s carb orgy at the Songkran festival, Wholesome Choice provided all the veggies we’ve been eating this week at the Salt household. In addition to the stores in our area that serve the Persian and Arab populations, I suspect you’ll find green almonds for a few more weeks at the better farmer’s markets around these parts. Here’s a link to farmer’s markets in the Los Angeles area, courtesy of the LA Times (free registration required).

The Persian recipes I’ve seen for green almonds have included fruit and or sugars, so I’m afraid those are out. Perhaps I’ll simply boil them and sautee with oil, garlic, and parsley, or something along those lines. To be truthful, I bought these cool looking, fuzzy little critters without knowing exactly what to do with them, but who’s not guilty of that every now and then? If you have any carb-free recipes, please leave me a note.

[Update: Regina Schrambling wrote this story for the LA Times about almonds, and talks about San Francisco chef’s Judy Rodgers role in popularizing green almonds. Free registration to the LA Times is required.]

Wholesome Choice
18040 Culver Dr
Irvine, CA
949-551-4111