Friday, March 28, 2014

C’mon, have a heart!

In early December of last year, Mike and I filled up the trunk of our car with coolers, dropped Harlowe off at her grandparents’ house for a play date, plugged in the GPS and headed north for 3 hours to a small town called Coe Hill…to see about a cow; an organically and ethically raised grass fed heritage breed cow. And only half of it, to be precise.
A couple years ago I started to pay a lot more attention to the food that we were consuming, nutritionally as well as ethically. It has become more important to me to know where our food comes from, how it was grown and harvested/butchered and what impact our consumption will have on the greater juggernaut of food production. Although I’m not by any means a frothing and unyielding locavore, I do feel like we have a responsibility to ourselves and our community (locally and globally) to make the best choices possible, within the boundaries of our individual circumstances and personal values.
After a fair bit of conversation, we decided that we were ready to take the next step and get a little bit closer to the farm by purchasing the meat directly from the farmer. During the course of my research to find the right farm and animal, I came across Janet and Henry Ellenberger and their organic farm. I was instantly smitten. Maybe it was the pictures of their beautiful highland horses, or maybe it was their unfaltering commitment to the land and forgotten produce like seed potatoes, but I knew that this was the farm from which we would order our cow.
Half a cow, even a “skinny” grass fed cow like ours, yields quite a bit of meat. We split our half with another couple and we will still have plenty of beef to carry us through until the fall. The most fun we had during this experience, however, was ordering the butchery to specification. Choosing how many pounds of stew beef to ground beef, how thick would the steaks be, how heavy the roasts, oh, it was glorious! And, as you could expect, under the “additional comments” section I specified that I wanted the bones and organs as well. There was no way that we were ordering up a half a cow without getting the offal!
If you have never tasted beef heart before, well, you’re in for a treat! Unlike liver or kidney, the heart doesn’t have that ferrous, forceful “organ” taste that some people find to be off-putting.  This is a hard working muscle so it tends to be quite lean but it’s a wonderfully concentrated source of nutrients. It is full of Vitamin A and B12, folic acid, iron (obvs, right?), but also selenium, phosphorous, zinc and copper. Did we mention Coenzyme Q10 and collagen? I don’t have a lot of in-depth knowledge on the science of nutrition, but I know that those are both key inclusions in my favourite face creams, so I’m just going to go ahead and tell myself that eating heart will make you pretty. Yes. This completely unscientific and oversimplified theory, brought to you by the Choosy Beggars! 
Cooking beef heart doesn’t need to be daunting. Because it is so lean, you can use the same rule of thumb that you would for any other tight muscle; grill/sear it lightly and quickly, or give it a long, slow braise to tenderize it. This may be late March, but in Ontario the air is still well below freezing and there are snow flurries happening outside right now as I’m typing this, so a braise just made sense.
Grass fed beef likes a slightly lower temperature and longer cooking time than conventional beef, but if you treat it like the tough beef or lamb stew meat that would normally be used for this type of tagine, you will be rewarded with fabulous flavour.

Beef Heart Tagine

serves 4-6 over your choice of starch
  • 1 grass fed beef heart (~ 1.5 kg/5-6 lb) *
  • 2 tbsp spice blend (recipe follows) **
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 medium onions
  • 5 plump cloves garlic
  • chubby 2″ chunk ginger
  • 3 tbsp tomato paste
  • 10 dates
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1.5 cups water
  • salt, to taste
  • 2 tbsp chopped cilantro, optional
Spice blend:
  • 2 pods black cardamom
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 1 tsp black peppercorn
  • 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 3/4 tsp allspice berries
  • 1/2 tsp anise seed
  • 1/2 tsp cloves
* You could substitute stewing beef or lamb for the heart.
* If you don’t have the spices on hand to make the spice blend, and you don’t feel like buying 8 little baggies for one dish, you can instead use 2 tablespoons of the Moroccan spice blend Ras el Hanout. Any additional spice blend (or Ras el Hanout) is great rubbed into chicken, beef or lamb before it hits the grill, stirred into curries or sprinkled in to give an extra curry-like kick to sweet potatoes, butternut squash or fried chickpeas.
via:http://www.choosy-beggars.com/index.php/2014/03/25/cmon-have-a-heart/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cmon-have-a-heart

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