For New Years eve we had a couple friends over for some dinner. We’ve done this a couple years now with them, this year we decided to try some ostrich. It was a very good choice, turned out very nice. The ostrich was served with potatoes au gratin and a couple variants of salads: cucumber salad and tomato and onion salad with mozzarella cheese.

We also had dessert, in the form of a pannacotta (an Italian dessert) with orange salad. The orange salad was flavoured with cinnamon and star anise. The recipe for the pannacotta and orange salad will come soon The recipe for the pannacotta can be found here 🙂

Anyways, here’s the recipes:
Ostrich with potatoes au gratin
serves 5-6

You need:

• Ostrich
  • 1.5 kilos of ostrich beef (whole piece)
  • 1 deciliters of a neutral oil
  • 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
  • 0.5 teaspoon freshly grained black pepper
  • salt
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme (crushed in mortar)
• Potatoes au gratin
  • Potatoes, roughly 1 kilogram (or as much as you think your guests will eat)
  • 1 big onion, or 2 smaller ones
  • 5 deciliters of cream
  • salt and pepper
  • grated cheese

How to:

• Ostrich
  1. Stir together the oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and thyme. Put the ostrich in a plastic bag and poor the marinade over, let sit in the fridge over night.
  2. Turn the oven on at 120 degrees Celsius. Fry the ostrich to give it color on all sides and put it in the oven and cook until the inner temperature is 63-65 degrees Celsius. If you over cook it it’ll turn out dry and boring. The meat should be pink/redish kind of bloody.
  3. When it is cooked, take it out of oven and let the meat rest under some aluminum foil for a while before cutting it up in rather thin slices. If you want to serve it as a cold dish wait until completely cold.
  4. The ostrich can be served warm or cold. The dish is very similar to roast beef in use and serving.
• Potatoes au gratin
  1. Put the oven on at 225 degrees Celsius. Slice the potatoes and onions, the thinner slice the faster cooking. A good thickness is around 0.5 centimeters at the most.
  2. Layer the potatoes and onions up in an oven proof form. Don’t forget to add some salt and pepper in between as well.
  3. Poor over the cream until it almost covers the potatoes. Sprinkle over grated cheese and cook in oven for about 30 minutes, until the potatoes are softened.

Cucumber salad
serves 5-6

You need:

• 1 cucumber
• 1 fresh red chili
• 1 tablespoon of pickling vinegar (12%)
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 3 tablespoons of cold water

How to:

1. Stir together the vinegar, sugar and water until the sugar has dissolved.
2. Slice the cucumber thin, chop the chili.
3. Put everything in a bowl and stir around, let it sit in the fridge at least 30 minutes before serving

Tomato and onion salad with mozzarella
serves 5-6

You need:

• 1-2 red onions
• 2-3 tomatoes
• olive oil
• (sea)salt and pepper
• mozzarella

How to:

1. Slice the onions and tomatoes and layer them up on a serving plate.
2. Sprinkle on salt and pepper and poor on olive oil.
3. Slice or cut up the mozzarella and place on the onions and tomatoes.
4. Can be prepared and placed in fridge under some plastic foil for a couple hours.

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