Post by Wes on Sept 22, 2010 16:38:15 GMT 10
If you like kangaroo, you'll love horse
PASS the dead horse. Last night I ate horse - four courses of it, in fact.
I started with a horse salumi and mortadella, carpaccio, horse ragu with pasta and a horse steak with polenta.
It's lean, has a subtle, sweet, distinctive flavour and should be on the menu of every second Italian or French restaurant in town.
But as it stands, only one person in Australia can sell it - and anyone who serves it has to do so in secret for fear of receiving death threats.
One restaurant was forced to cancel plans for a horsemeat dinner, which sold out in half a day, after threats against the chef and a protest outside his Melbourne restaurant.
But horse meat - at its best when the animal is 12 to 18 months old - is an iron-rich food which has so far been ignored and banned up until recently for human consumption in Australia
Food Editor Grant Jones tries horse meat in the Orrichette with Ragu di Cavallo.
While animal activists are up in arms about people eating horsemeat here, Australia exports 40,000 or more horses each year for the plates of diners overseas.
"What we are doing is perfectly legal. There is just an emotional connection to it," said Stewart White from the Australian Association of Food Professionals, who organised the dinner for 20 guests.
"We have an aversion to anything Disney made a movie of."
Earlier this year Vince Garreffa of Mondo Di Carne gourmet butchers in Perth offered the country's first horses for human consumption.
But soon after Mr Garreffa was approved to sell it, he received several threats.
Last week Mondo's sent out a vacuum-packed 10kg shipment for some interested food industry professionals to try in Sydney. The meat sells for anything from $19.50 a kilo for mortadella to $90kg for fillet.
The dinner, cooked by two well-known Italian chefs from Sydney, who preferred not to be named, was less of a stunt and more of an experiment.
"It needs help as it is a lean meat," one chef said at the Inner West location, kept secret until the last minute.
Cooked as a minute steak, with salt, pepper and olive oil, it is not unlike venison, but not as gamey, and far superior to kangaroo in my opinion.
Chef Andrew Stewart with horse carpaccio
www.news.com.au/national/food-writer-grant-jones-says-horse-should-be-available-on-menus-everywhere/story-e6frfkvr-1225927618496
PASS the dead horse. Last night I ate horse - four courses of it, in fact.
I started with a horse salumi and mortadella, carpaccio, horse ragu with pasta and a horse steak with polenta.
It's lean, has a subtle, sweet, distinctive flavour and should be on the menu of every second Italian or French restaurant in town.
But as it stands, only one person in Australia can sell it - and anyone who serves it has to do so in secret for fear of receiving death threats.
One restaurant was forced to cancel plans for a horsemeat dinner, which sold out in half a day, after threats against the chef and a protest outside his Melbourne restaurant.
But horse meat - at its best when the animal is 12 to 18 months old - is an iron-rich food which has so far been ignored and banned up until recently for human consumption in Australia
Food Editor Grant Jones tries horse meat in the Orrichette with Ragu di Cavallo.
While animal activists are up in arms about people eating horsemeat here, Australia exports 40,000 or more horses each year for the plates of diners overseas.
"What we are doing is perfectly legal. There is just an emotional connection to it," said Stewart White from the Australian Association of Food Professionals, who organised the dinner for 20 guests.
"We have an aversion to anything Disney made a movie of."
Earlier this year Vince Garreffa of Mondo Di Carne gourmet butchers in Perth offered the country's first horses for human consumption.
But soon after Mr Garreffa was approved to sell it, he received several threats.
Last week Mondo's sent out a vacuum-packed 10kg shipment for some interested food industry professionals to try in Sydney. The meat sells for anything from $19.50 a kilo for mortadella to $90kg for fillet.
The dinner, cooked by two well-known Italian chefs from Sydney, who preferred not to be named, was less of a stunt and more of an experiment.
"It needs help as it is a lean meat," one chef said at the Inner West location, kept secret until the last minute.
Cooked as a minute steak, with salt, pepper and olive oil, it is not unlike venison, but not as gamey, and far superior to kangaroo in my opinion.
Chef Andrew Stewart with horse carpaccio
www.news.com.au/national/food-writer-grant-jones-says-horse-should-be-available-on-menus-everywhere/story-e6frfkvr-1225927618496