Tuesday, March 15, 2011

This is for my people

Sunday night was a bit of a cooking extravaganza. After rearranging and cleaning out my kitchen, it felt like time to celebrate by using every pot and pan, and all 1.5 sq feet of counter space that I have. Ok, maybe I nearly achieve that second part with my Magic Bullet each morning.

I had caribou in my freezer that my mum gave me. I had beer. And I had carrots. It was time to make the semi-annual meat dish! By coincidence, I made the same recipe that I did almost exactly a year ago: Beef in Beer. I switched up a couple of things, like a can of Guinness for a can of some other tall boy that I had in the fridge, and I used caribou instead of beef.

Last year, it appears that I did not blog about the dumpling part of this recipe. This is likely because dumplings are not my forte. The recipe that I followed called for suet as a fat base. Suet, according to Wikipedia, is raw beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. Right. Well, there was a decent amount of fat on the caribou that I had, so that was going to be used. In Inuktitut we call this tunnuq, the texture is amazing when it's raw and frozen.

What when into my dumplings:

about 3/4 cup flour
a pinch of baking powder
2 tbsp chopped parsley
about 2 tbsp chopped tunnuq

Last time I did these dumplings I used vegetable oil. Both times the dumplings were mediocre, I know that I'm doing something wrong, I just don't understand The Dumpling. With this recipe, you should add the dumplings to the pot after 1 3/4 hours of cooking, and let it cook for another half hour.

Here is the dish, unfortunately I didn't take a picture when it looked steamy and delicious in the baking dish, but when it was cold, and already in Tupperware life:


It was yummy, it smelled amazing, the caribou was perfect. Things that I would change that I did this time:

Definitely use Guinness. You cannot substitute this. I'm sure there are many people out there who would agree with this on so many levels.

I'd learn how to make a proper dumpling, fluffy and flavourful.

Other than that, it was A+ as my semi-annual meat dish!

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