{"id":11196,"date":"2017-01-14T01:57:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-14T01:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=11196"},"modified":"2017-01-14T01:57:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T01:57:13","slug":"i-dont-know-what-this-was-but-it-probably-wasnt-rosti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=11196","title":{"rendered":"I don’t know what this was, but it probably wasn’t r\u00f6sti"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Roesti_elk\"<\/p>\n

The idea was to find something in which I could incorporate some leftover elk. I quickly came across an old newspaper clipping in a file I’ve marked, ‘using leftover meat’. It seemed it would be a good bet.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0recipe which became my jumping off point had was\u00a0within a 2012 New York Times Food section clipping<\/a>. It seemed to have a lot going for it, and it would be a\u00a0small investment in time and the number of ingredients. While described as a way to\u00a0rejuvenate overcooked meat, that definitely wasn’t my problem; I merely wanted to stretch a\u00a0cup of leftover elk and to overcome some of the chewiness\u00a0which had accompanied its first appearance<\/a> 4\u00a0nights before.<\/p>\n

To start with I reduced\u00a0the strips of elk to very small pieces, (making sure to cut\u00a0across<\/em> the grain this time).\u00a0The instructions\u00a0called for twice as much meat as I had, but I wasn’t concerned about that. Instead, having almost immediately realized\u00a0I had far too few potatoes to make a meal for 2, I was stumped for a moment\u00a0before deciding to throw in a few different<\/em> roots (one turnip, one parsnip, one carrot, and part of a large\u00a0horseradish), grating each of them in turn, as I did\u00a0the Russet potatoes and the yellow onion that were parts of the printed recipe.<\/p>\n

Oh, and I didn’t have thyme it mentioned, so I used rosemary and sage.<\/p>\n

Otherwise I proceeded exactly\u00a0as it\u00a0was written, but while I was supposed to find the underside of my sorta-potato pancake turning a “deep golden brown”, the constituents never bound\u00a0together enough to be slipped onto a plate and reversed into the pan, as the recipe instructed.\u00a0I don’t know what went wrong, unless it was the fact that almost half of my ingredients were without the kind of gluten required for the chemistry to make its magic.<\/p>\n

I left the vegetables\u00a0flattened in the pan as they had originally been arranged, and only moved it, in dollops\u00a0like a rice or porridge, once I thought\u00a0my ‘R\u00f6sti’ was fully cooked,\u00a0into 2 shallow bowls. \u00a0I\u00a0had made the move just in time, because it I\u00a0discovered I had very narrowly avoided burning the bottom. There was a lagniappe however: I had somehow managed to produce a certain amount of\u00a0socarrat<\/em><\/a>, something I had heard of, but\u00a0never experienced, because\u00a0I’ve never had a proper paella.<\/p>\n

We were both amazed at how delicious it turned out in the end. Amazed.<\/p>\n

Melissa Clark’s\u00a0recipe, much of which I\u00a0seem to have dodged, is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n