It's all in the game: Wild boar ragu with gnocchi - Wildschwein ragout mit Gnocchi

Sunday 24 July 2011

It’s a funny old world at times, I had decided at the weekend that I would have a bit of game, so I got what I thought was a couple of hare legs, but when I thawed out, the packet turned out to be a boned wild boar shoulder, ah well change of recipe!

I now decided to do a wild boar ragout with chanterelles and baby mushrooms and home made Gnocchi and that it would have a nice strong sauce, so to this end I bought a couple of bottles of fairly reasonable Bordeaux.

So Sunday morning arrived ,or at least I think it did, as I had been out at the footy club the night before and this can mist the memory.

So I had a boned shoulder of wild boar from a spring shoot (not mine, but a hunt friend), 2 bottles of reasonable Bordeaux, a bunch of suppengrün,

2 handfuls of chanterelles ( pfifferlingen), 100g baby mushrooms ,some floury potatoes and a couple of onions.

So the ingredients for this meal are:

1000g of wild boar shoulder, trimmed of sinew and diced into 2.5mm cubes.

100g of speck or diced streaky smoked bacon.

50g of air dried ham (just because I had some that needed using up)

1 bunch of suppengün (soup vegetables consisting of a piece of celeriac, a couple of leeks and three carrots as well as a bunch of parsley (this I used not in the stock but in the mushroom s)

2 bottles of red Bordeaux (you never know when the second will come in handy)

50ml of red wine vinegar

700g of floury potatoes

2 eggs

150g of plain wheat flour (+ enough for dusting)

50g of butter

A small handful of sage

100g of pepper cured and cooked pork belly

About 3 onions, it may have been 4

A few cloves of garlic (say 5)

A good dusting of my game spices

A teaspoon of sweet paprika

4-5 Juniper berries

Ground rosemary

Teaspoon of white mustard seeds

Fresh ground black pepper

A piece of cinnamon bark (2.5mm or 1”)

4 cloves

600g of good stock

Oil for frying

Method:

Put the cubed wild boar into a dish with a good dusting of game spices, and rosemary, add a chopped onion and a couple of crushed cloves of garlic, add the mustard seed, cinnamon, cloves and fresh ground pepper. Add half a bottle of wine and the red wine vinegar. Cover and leave in a cool place for a couple of hours (over night if possible).

When you are ready to make your ragu, dice the root vegetables into a small dice, dice your speck, onions and garlic. Heat some oil in a wide heavy based frying pan at the same time heat some oil in a cast iron casserole, fry the speck, onions, veg and garlic in the casserole. Brown the dried cubed wild boar in the frying pan over a high heat (do not try to fry too many at a time or they will start to stew and not brown).

Add the browned meat with the air dried ham to the vegetables in the casserole and add some of the wine and stock to the frying pan to deglaze, pour this over the meat and add the remainder of the stock and the marinade.

Put the lid on and into the oven at 170°C for 3hours (at least).

Making the Gnocchi

Cook the potatoes (some do them in their skins and then peal them when cooked and still hot (this has been known to causes blister on your fingers) and then press them though a ricer, add 150g of plain white four and 2 eggs and mix well add salt to taste.

Flour a board and roll out the potato dough into long rolls I made mine into about 20cm lengths and cut them into 8 pieces, roll them into cylinders and flatten with the back of a fork.

Next clean the mushrooms and dice the peppered belly, dice an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, heat some oil in a frying pan, add the ingredients and slowly sauté the mushroom, onion, speck mixture. Add a handful of chopped parsley when finished.

Now put the gnocchi into boiling salted water when they rise to the surface they are ready remove with a slotted spoon and set to one side

In the same pan that you sautéed the mushrooms in heat the butter and when foaming add the sage, then add the gnocchi keep them moving so that they don’t stick to the bottom.