I have been using the food-sharing app OLIO quite a lot over the last year. It was set up as a way to try to reduce food waste in the UK, with people who sign up able to list food and other items that they either do not want or cannot use, for other users of the app to request for free and collect. If I'm honest, I mainly signed up in the hope that people might be listing some unusual tins that people didn't want, and while I have ended up getting all sorts of items through the app, it certainly hasn't disappointed on the tin front.
A while back I spotted that someone had listed this tin of Springbok Paté. The user had just described it as "paté" though, so at first I wasn't sure if Springbok was just a brand name, and hence it was just a Mild Herb paté, which wouldn't have been very exciting. Closer inspection of the photo however revealed that it did in fact contain 42% South African springbok meat - so I had to have it.
I had been expecting quite a dense, course paté, which didn't prove to be the case at all. Perhaps that's not all that surprising - 42% is not a very high percentage of meat, and aside from that it only contained vegetable oil, water, isolated vegetable proteins (whatever they may be), herbs and spices - in short, not a lot that was going to provide much more body to it. That did have the effect of making it quite light in texture, and very smooth (apart from the odd peppercorn). It was quite rich in flavour, whatever the flavour was - I would have been hard pressed to say what other than "vaguely meaty". It was too strong for chicken liver and not porky enough for anything from a pig. Was there possibly was a hint of gaminess to it? I'm not sure if I might have been imagining that.
I ate it spread onto a few oatcakes - and, in another nod to South Africa, topped it with some pieces of biltong which I'd happened to spot in the reduced section a few weeks before. While adding a further random meatiness to the snack, it made it practically impossible to eat - biltong is so ridiculously tough and chewy that you really need to just eat it on its own, and hope your teeth survive... But a pleasant enough snack nonetheless, which took me back to travelling through southern Africa in those carefree days just after I'd finished university but before the world of work took hold. I can't remember if I tried springbok back then, but I do remember having a kudu steak, which is not a dissimilar beast. Ah, good times.
Another random spot on OLIO was this tin of Wild Boar Goulash. Again, I put in an immediate request for it - not just because it contained another random meat, but also because I am a huge goulash fan, having spent the best part of a year living in Austria (a few years A traditional Austro-Hungarian dish, it is near enough a staple on restaurant menus over there, and is generally quite delicious. It is usually made with beef or pork, so a wild boar version - with added prunes and plum brandy - sounded very much like a "Deluxe" version, a brand name owned and produced by Lidl.
This time it was 50% wild boar (or wild pork, as listed in the ingredients - is that technically the same?), with red wine and cream in addition to the brandy and prunes. At 300g it wasn't a big tin, so I was a litle surprised to see from the label that it claimed to contain two portions. A standard soup tin is 400g, and I generally feel a bit short-changed if I only have half one of those.
The serving suggestion photo showed some nice big chunks of meat, served with what looked like a sliced dumpling. That was one of the other things I loved about gulasch (as it is spelled over there) - the wonderful array of dumplings you can have as an accompaniment. I got out my Austrian cookbook, located a bakery that sold authentic Kaiser rolls, and made some Semmelknödeln to serve alongside - a clever, thrifty way to use up stale bread and bulk out a meal.
The gulasch itself boar - sorry, bore - little resemblance to the photo, with much smaller chunks of meat and much more of the soupy gravy. The latter is however quite authentic in terms of how it is traditionally served - quite often you will get a large shallow bowl of thick soup - plenty of liquid for your dumplings to soak up, and with just a few big chunks of meat in it, stewed for hours so they are almost falling apart. Here, the small pieces of meat were somewhat chewy and disappointing (not biltong-level chewiness, but certainly more so than I would have liked). I would have guessed beef over pork, though there was a definite gamey backnote this time.
I should really have guessed, given the ingredients, that the gulasch was going to be very rich in flavour. It was also perhaps a little sweeter than I would have liked, largely due to the prunes, which I am not sure were really necessary. Maybe two portions in one tin was about right after all - certainly with my Semmelknödeln it made for a very hearty meal. That is exactly how I remember if from my time in Austria though - filling, warming and extremely comforting, and it brought back a little of that feeling, as I tucked in.
So, while the main idea behind OLIO is to reduce food waste, for me it has been great in providing some interesting tins - and, as with these ones, bringing back some happy memories in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment