There is one ingredient that the love of to me is a litmus test if someone is a real gourmet or not. It is bone marrow. I am partly joking, but I am also partly serious. I adore bone marrow and I know only very few serious foodies who don’t share that view. I have a preference for raw bone marrow. You can spread it raw on a warm toast or you can add it to beef tartar.
I think it is written in our genes to love bone marrow. A lot of paleo-research witness of our ancestors’ love for this fatty highly nutritious part of animals. In these two articles, here and here, for instance we can read about the life in the Paris Bassin in the Magdalenian. Especially this quote is interesting:
“There are no whole bones in the faunal assemblages from Pincevent or Verberie. There are abundant impact fractures, systematically placed to open the medullary cavities for the extraction of marrow”.
Speaking of rein deer bone marrow, I highly recommend everyone to try it as it is really something. Also to try is marrow from a just killed animal that has not quite cooled.
Now back to the topic, namely the paleo-style beef tartar. It is simple to do. You need the following ingredients for one beef tartar:
One nice piece of bone marrow
A slice of good beef, I use rib eye or if I can find a tender and marbled bavette I will use that
Cevennes onions or onions of the Cénol variety, which is really the same thing except for that the former must be from Cevennes
Capers
Orléans mustard from Martin Pouret
Fleur de sel from Guérande
Egg yolk for those who want
Sarawak pepper
Fresh wild arugula leafs
So what are Orléans mustard and capers doing in a paleo beef tartar? Well that particular mustard is there because it is the best mustard in the world and a dash of it makes the tartar simply irresistible. The capers are there because they are home cured and good.
Preparation is done according to personal preferences or mood. Pop the morrow from the bone. One way to do it is to place it in cold water for a while, then pop it with the thumb. Dice the bone marrow or pass it through a tamis. Dice, grind or grate the beef. Add the marrow to the beef and a small spoon of mustard and blend. Dice the onion finely and rinse the dice thoroughly to soften the flavor somewhat. Add the diced onions and some capers to the tartar and blend. Season with a bit of sea salt and the pepper. Remember that the arugula leafs will add peppery notes to the tartar so be careful with the pepper.
Plate the tartar and add arugula leafs on top. Enjoy!
8 Comments
I love Bone marrow but Raw ? ya well …
My grand mother told me that our ancestors( a father was part Sioux Lakota partly spanish ) use to spread lever bile (the green stuff yuck) on Raw buffalo meat …
The Sioux indians use to love that for 2 reasons :
1/ the bile contains Vitamin C & more that was important to their health
2/it taste like salt to them and since they only lived on Meat they knew nothing about all the different taste such sweet, spicy & more of what we know now …
Garance
This was awesome — not that I expected less of you, mind you. But this was ridiculously good, and you’re sooo right about the mustard.
I’m not sure I’ve ever had raw marrow. Now I want it. Thanks for introducing this idea to me.
I note that l’Arpège is not in your ‘favourite-5′, but, looking at your mise en place, I would have thought you are perhaps a fan of Passard’s…
The closest I’ve ever had to raw marrow is deep fried chicken wings (no batter) that are just barely cooked, so the meat is very slightly pink – to eliminate any chance of salmonella – but the marrow, when the bones are cracked open with your molars, is bright red. A wonderfully rich taste, especially wonderful with a spicy-sour chili sauce.
I understand that marrow in healthy animals is, in itself, quite free from salmonella and other pathogens. The only reported instances of salmonella contamination of marrow that I’ve been able to find have occur in the preprocessing and processing stage, e.g., in dressing the legs. Thus, it’s important to crack your bones open by yourself rather than having a butcher crack them for you. But good luck doing this for, say, a shank bone!
@Garance, thanks for your comments.
@ Julot: Glad you liked it.
@UE: Yes you need to try it. Especially the spread version even it is a bit tricky to make.
@Food Snob: It is a good question why l’Arpege is not one of my fav places. I find Passard’s approach to food as good as it gets. I have had some of the most memorable dishes in any restaurant at l’Arpege. Having said that, I have had some far from perfect meals and well, when his cooking is off, it falls very hard and deep I think. Then there is the constant annoyment of the prices of the wines. Exorbitant is not the appropriate word.
@ anon: Thanks for your reply. You touch upon an interesting issue: can salmonella proliferate if you eat a paleo-diet? You would probably all be surprised but it cannot. More here:
The more here link on salmonella on a paleo-diet is missing. Think you could re-post it?
Hello Mikael,
Hum, that is strange. Here is one link: http://iai.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/72/11/6294 . Not sure if it was what I posted. It is the same mechanism as for H. pylori, in other words hydrogen is a much needed fuel. You ensure hydrogen production by eating wheat, lots of fructose and some other fibers, all of which we have only eaten for a short time of our evolution. Though it seems starch that is easily broken down does not cause hydrogen production in our stomach. It all makes sense. Stephen at Wholehealthsource has written about this I think.