Highly Irregular Stone Cottage Wines

Hand pressed wine from Beechworth, North East Victoria

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Kangeroo Ragoo

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It is so easy to make a very brilliant ragu that to make a greasy cow pat spag bol is criminally insane. Let the ranting commence.

In my efforts to reduce the water footprint of my carnivorous urges, the ‘roo must really be No. 1 contender for all things minced. It’s a pretty intense flavour, like venison. But then, if you don’t like flavour, well, you’re dead. It itrritates me intensely when people try and tone down the ‘roo because of this, often by drenching or marinading it in all manner of salty, vinegary shit. Just let it be, man. It’s wild, it’s got flavour. If you like you meat bland, eat tofu.

The key to the ragu is taking the time to chop the vegetables finely and cooking it for ever to get a concentrated, dense sauce. Oh yes, and chicken livers.

In the hostel from hell in Freemantle, I remember passing through the kitchen and getting a waft of the usual SpagBol abomination- garlic almost burnt, a pack of mince dumped in to absorb this nauseating cremation, and tinned tomatoes, all ready to serve in 10 mins. Foul.

So, roughly tripling up Simon Hopkinson’s non-family recipe,

  • 100g butter
  • 50ml olive oil
  • a few garlic cloves
  • 3-4 onions
  • 4-6 carrots
  • 4-6 celery sticks,

All finely diced and fried to pallor,

You could add a good slug of white wine (yes white, not red)
Then add
  • 1kg roo mince
  • 500g chicken livers, chopped (we like a lot of chicken liver)
And stir till broken up. Then,
  • 600ml passata
  • 2bay leaves
  • Black pepper
  • Nutmeg
  • 500ml milk, yep, a bit weird
And then slowly cook, and occasionally stir until you can just see the bottom of the pan when you do so. I think this outing took 4-5 hours. To serve, clearly boil up some decent pasta, though dried is probably better. Add cream or more butter to make richer and rain on the parmesan. You don’t need to drench the pasta with sauce, just enough to have a morsel with each piece of pasta.
This is one of those dishes that can be washed down with some plonk or something top end. In the absence of some fine Italian wine, a very good pinot is rather good. Current tipple is Bogong Estate, made by a dedicated pinotphile. Christ, watch the typo there.
Oh yes, three large plastic containers are now in the freezer, enough for six meals. Instant gastronomic heaven, result.

 

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