Excerpt from the Edmonton Journal for your information
CREDIT: Greg Southam, The Journal; Normand Campbell holds packaged kangaroo meat ready for an event at his restaurant later this month.
Kangaroo makes dinner debut
Normand’s brings in meat for Australia Day
Noemi LoPinto
The Edmonton Journal
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
EDMONTON – Ostrich, elk, musk ox and caribou are regular features on the menu at Normand’s bistro at 11639 Jasper Avenue, but next week’s serving of wild game is really going to have the place hopping.
For the first time in the province, kangaroo will be on bistro owner and chef Normand Campbell’s menu for a special dinner on Tuesday for the Edmonton Australian Wine club.
He hasn’t decided how he is going to prepare it.
“It’s described as being close to venison,” Campbell explained. “I’m going to play with it for a few days. I don’t know the sauce yet. Something with berries, or a wild mushroom, something I know goes with venison, like saskatoon berries. Or lemon sorbet.”
A staple of the Australian aboriginal’s diet for thousands of years, kangaroo meat is high in protein, zinc and iron, but very low in fat.
It has a gamey-flavoured taste, but is a delicate meat which must not be overcooked or it will dry up.
It took Campbell’s Vancouver-based game meats supplier, Hill’s Foods Ltd, eight years of lobbying before the Canadian Food Inspection Agency added kangaroo to the list of legally imported meats.
It was finally approved in October.
“I love trying out new things,” Campbell said. “I think it’s time for restaurants to stop serving chicken a hundred different ways. Try pheasant, partridge or squab. The only meats I won’t experiment with are endangered animals.”
Tuesday’s event is in honour of Australia Day on Jan. 26, a public holiday in that country.
The wine club will also be tasting a 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot blend from the Trinders Vineyard in Cape Mentelle, in Western Australia.
The highlight of the evening is a 1999 Tim Adams Aberfeldy, a red wine from McLaren Vale in southern Australia.
Club president Ken Allred said he is very excited.
“Except for the climate, Canada and Australia have a lot in common. No snow, of course. But the wines are big and full bodied and have lots of fruit in them. It’s going to be a lot cheaper to go to Normand’s and have kangaroo than go to Australia.”
Campbell ordered enough medallions of meat to serve the club’s 50-odd members, and curious customers for a few weeks afterwards.
“We’re going to run it as a verbal special for a while and see how it goes,” Campbell said. “We want to try it out and have fun with it.”
The club’s 6th annual Australia Day celebration is open to the public, but space is limited. Go to www.ozwineclub.ca for more information.
nlopinto@thejournal.canwest.com
Down Under Details
- Kangaroo is a succulent, versatile, lean red meat, with very little fat.
- Almost half of the fat in kangaroo meat consists of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) molecules, which are believed to improve blood flow and reduce the blood’s tendency to clot, which is useful for meat lovers struggling with heart disease.
- The most popular techniques for prime cuts are pan frying at high temperatures to sear and seal the meat, rare roasting on a high heat, barbecuing, char grilling and stir frying.
- If you add salt to kangaroo prior to cooking, it will draw out the meat juices, resulting in dry meat.
- The meat is higher in protein than lean beef, pork, chicken, rabbit or lamb, lower in fat than all of them except pork, and lower in cholesterol than lamb, beef and rabbit.
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