Zebra

At my local market, one of the meat vendors has all this exotic meat on display which I have often glanced at. So back in September, for my birthday, I decided it was time to try some of it out. Ok, you do pay premium price, but often can you tell your friends that you're frying zebra, crocodile or kangaroo for dinner? And it's only my birthday once a year so I treated my girlfriend and myself for this package of zebra loin. I had no idea of cooking it so I asked the butcher for a suggestion. He said just to fry it for a minute or less on each side, to eat it no more than medium cooked. I decided just to make a some potatoes in the oven and a bit of exotic ketchup to go with it. And the verdict? It tasted gamey with a hint of liver (in a good way), but it wasn't strong at all. Quite mild in the flavour. Though it was good, I won't be rushing out to get more unless the price goes down. As an experiment it's well worth trying though.

Ingredients:

Zebra meat

4 potatoes

2 tomatoes

1 tbsp ginger flavoured jam (or fruit jam + some ginger)

Thyme

Olive oil

The meat, take it out so it's at room temperature.

Fry the tomatoes with some jam and a bit of ginger in some oliveoil

Add a bit of thyme

Slice the potatoes, season them with salt. Toss them with some olive oil. Put them in the oven for 20 minutes. Turn them, sprinkle them with a bit of paprika. Give them another 20 minutes or until they are crispy.

On a hot grill or frying pan, fry the meat for one minute or less. Add a bit of quality salt. Turn. I use a grill as it leaves nice stripes on the meat (guess why...)

Serve and eat while warm.

A close-up of the meat. Nice and juice...

Sneak preview and Bulgarian Salad

How complicated it is to maintain a blog when you don’t really have access to the old Internet. But I’ll give you a small teaser/taster of what is to come once I return to the 21^st century. I’ve been making a great paella, frying up some arepas, meddled with some falafels, and not least will there be a photo tour of our gastroholidays in Bulgaria. The picture below is from an amazing salad we had in Veliko Tarnovo in one of it’s best restaurant called Shtastlivetsa (Lucky Man). And then I tried to copycat it in the picture below.

Ingredients: Lettuce, tomatoes (the best tomatoes I’ve ever had were Bulgarian, without a doubt), cucumber, red onion rings, olives, crispy bacon, chicken pieces fried in paprika and oregano, white bulgarian cheese (similar to feta, but not as salty), jalapeños instead of chilies, and a paste made of mushed red pepper with white cheese. Before serving it’s given a quick shot of olive oil and sprinkled with oregano and dill. It brought us back to Bulgaria if not for longer than the duration of the dinner.

Original version...

My copycat version.

Apologies for poor maintenance of this blog

Hello dear reader of this blog,

I just thought I needed to explain why this blog apparently has gone dead all of a sudden. We were about to buy a house when the owner suddenly pulled out at the very last minute. We had already packed everything, cancelled our monthly bills and were ready to move out. Luckily we could stay in our rented apartment, but they cut the phone bill and thus the Internet connection. So until further notice, I will be cooking away (as soon as all my kitchen tools are unpacked), taking lots of photos and, as soon as I'm back up again I will work my way through new recipes and post them here bit by bit. Not least from the inspiration I've picked up from travelling through Bulgaria this summer. The food there is superb and dead cheap. You'll hear more when our Internet Provider decides to give us our line back.

Until then, happy cooking to all!