This one comes from the center of Belgium, where the cooks use beer in the kitchen even more cheerfully than the French cooks use wine !
You need ( for 4 persons )
2 bottles or 0.75 liters of REAL BELGIAN gueuze ( there IS NO substitute )
( click on this picture to see it in large scale glory : you can almost smell it ;)
( try a dry lager if you can't find the real thing , the result will be good but different )1 kilogram of lean mixed minced meat ( half pork and half beef )
2 egg yolks
1 tsp of freshly grated nutmeg
a slice of bread 1 cm thick
1/2 cup of milk
butter ( or olive oil )
1 tablespoon of beurre manié (butter and white flour)
I'm making this dish with about 600 grams of lean mixed minced meat
so I use only one yolk and a thinner slice of bread.
Trim the crusts of your slice of bread ( I prefer brown : it adds character! ^_^)
Let the bread soak in some milk .
Add your egg yolks to your minced meat.Grate about a fifth of a nutmeg (I guess about 1,5 teaspoon ;)
on your meat and add some pepper. ( 4-5 turns of your peppermill )
Now squeeze most of the milk from your bread which should be nice and soggy by now, add it to the meat and knead it all firmly to a nice mix with your hands.
Use a spoon to scoop some mix into your hand and form into balls of a size you prefer.
Rub your hands with a little water, but not too much or you'll find the minced meat
slides around instead of rolling into balls! I use the spoon to scrape the meat of my palms every now and then. A spoon also lets you measure the same amount easier than when you try to scoop some up with your fingers.
I made mine about 4 cm thick and look at that, I got exactly 20 of them !
Melt some butter in a frying pan ( I used a non stick wok ) and on a fairly high heat ( 7 out of 12 electric) brown the balls on all sides in 2-3 minutes ( they shouldn't be cooked through yet ! )
When done , transfer them to a large pot , so they're all on the bottom.Pour your bottle(s) of gueuze over them to make them happy , put the lid on and let them simmer on a low heat for half an hour.
The original recipe does it all in the same pot and then calls for
degreasing the sauce, which I find a bother.
My way leaves most of the fat behind in the frying pan so you don't have to do this.
Make a tablespoon of beurre manié by mixing a tablespoon of oil or butter with flour. Keep adding flour till the mixture becomes a smooth paste that is nearly starting to crumble. Try using a neutral oil ( first pressed virgin olive oil can be taste a bit too strong )
Scoop the balls out of the sauce and put in a warm dish.Whisk the beurre manié lightly into the sauce to bind it ( it never gets really thick , but that's not what you aim for anyway so don't worry ). Beurre manié is the same mixture as roux , but roux is cooked by heating it and adding the liquid beforehand. Such as in white sauce. Beurre Manie is added after the cooking and binds for a shorter time , which is fine because you'll eat it right away.
Pour the sauce over the balls in a dish. Ready to enjoy!
(click on picture for a mouthwatering larger view O_O )
Because of the gueuze the sauce has a nice slightly tart taste (tart is slightly acid but nicer ;) which goes very well with the tenderly cooked meat (ah if only I could post the SMELL !)
You can cover this in foil and heat up later in a microwave but it is hard to resist eating it right away! Serve with ample slices of bread ( you will need them to mop up the sauce ! ).
7 comments:
wow that looks amazingly good!
i'm tempted to try it!! though i have to look out for pork mince, they were cheap last week and i hope they still are on Thursday :(...
what is geuze though? can I just use normal beer? I think the only Belgian thing we have is Stella Artois and Hoegaarden. The rest is mostly German brews.
Welcome Ihsara,
Geuze (or Gueuze ) is a beer made exclusively in Belgium by mixing old and new lambic , to produce a beer that foams ( lambic doesn't ), but you'll be hard pressed to find it abroad.
I have a nice explanation on lambic in my april 13 post : Cherry blossom viewing
Still it would be interesting to try it with white hoegaerden ( I think I'll try that myself ! ).
Cooking with beer is an adventure ( some beers become slightly bitter others more sweet some become inedible! ). I tried this with Leffe brown and it was a bit characterless.
The tart ( slightly acid ) taste of the beer sauce with geuze was totally absent.
As a Belgian I'm against drinking Stella , which is a product of Inbev ( totally industrial ) , sadly Hoegaarden was a privately owned beer , has been bought by Inbev and the quality has suffered.
Ah, if only I could let you taste some of the 400 real Belgian beers we have here.
do also try my other recipes ( just click on the label 'food' to see them all ) especially the Rata , haha.
Go on , be brave and let me know how it turned out .
Oh wow, this recipe certainly brings back memories! ^_^ I had this before a long time ago, but I don't remember where ^^;;; Still, I'll have to try this recipe soon! I think I might be braver to try this than to try the coffee one :P
If it was with Geuze beer , almost certainly in Belgium, I would think. But you can always try it with another beer.
It's an old traditional dish.
Like beer soup ,beer pudding ,mussels in beer etc..
I made this last week!
Although, mine ended up really soupy. But it was yummy! The Hoegaarden was something different! Generally I hate beers, but the Hoegaarden had a really different smell and aroma to the local Aussie beers. It made the sauce (soup?) real nice!
Being the chinaman that I am, I had mine with rice hehehe :P
Ihsara! Glad you liked it ;) which Hoegaarden did you use ?
Try mixing in a bit more beurre manie next time or let it cook on a low heat a bit longer : the water will evaporate till the sauce thickens.
The sauce never thickens completely , it's always slightly runny, which makes it great to mop it up with a slice of bread or with rice.
Too much beurre manie would make it taste of flour too much.
i used the witbier one :) its the only kind they sell here~
Post a Comment