Kangaroo Three Ways: Three

Meatballs meatballs meatballs!

More accurately, since these are more flat than spherical...

Patties patties patties! No, that just sounds wrong. I'll stick with meatballs. I've lovingly nicknamed them my "Off-key Meatballs" -- because they're a little flat.

I don't understand why making meatballs has such a calming effect on me. From chopping the vegetables to mixing the meat by hand and forming it into non-uniform shapes, the whole process seems to lower my heart rate and take my blood pressure from mildly hypotensive to "Get thee to a salt lick!". Perhaps instead of searching for individual clients, I should start a relaxation class based on food preparation.

If I were the same person but with a lot more time and kitchen space, I would have baked tiny, yeasty sesame rolls so that I could have mini roo burgers instead of serving them "naked" with slaw. The sad, winter-stunted tomatoes I've been seeing around are even the right size for small burgers.

Kangaroo Three Ways: Two

Stir-fried with chilli and basil, substiting roo for the chicken in this recipe.

The reason for the three ways being that at the moment, kangaroo mince is only available in 1kg packs, and I don't like the texture of meat that's been frozen raw so I have to cook it before freezing. And I find the notion of preparing a kilo of the same meat in the same way, to be consumed by one person, rather frightening. In my mind I could see my freezer rack stacked high with boxes of bolognaise, and in another frame, could see myself eating it day after day after day, far into the horizon: on rice, on pasta, on toast with chunks of mozarella broken over it -- an illegitimate pizza, wrapped in shortcrust pastry and finished with a crimped semicircular edge, like the confused offspring resulting from a liaison between pastizzi and curry puff. Day in and day out I'd be eating the same thing in only marginally different ways, and it would only be a matter of time before I began to see monotony as a good thing. Horrors.

I was a little disappointed when I tasted it: based on the way the chilli fumes were making my eyes water as I stirred, I had been gleefully expecting a furious, full-bodied kick of spice. Instead, I tasted sweetness first; basil second; and only then did the chilli weakly saunter in, like some clueless partygoer who'd been the first to RSVP but forgot to turn up on the day. I'll just double the chilli the next time, and hopefully then my head will detach itself at first bite. How else is spicy food satisfying than when it makes you feel you might never be able to form a full sentence again?

And why am I even cooking kangaroo?

I guess I'll eventually talk about that. Right now, it's enough that I'm managing both the cooking and the eating.

Kangaroo Three Ways: One

"Bolognese" sauce (the inverted commas are the product of a paranoid mind that imagines some hefty Italian food purist asking me through gritted teeth, "What do you mean bolognese? That's no bolognese..." Said Italian food purist might even be thwacking filled cannoli menacingly in his open, ham-sized palm as the teeth remain gritted) on brown rice, um, "risotto" (see earlier paranthesis about purpose of inverted commas): a hearty, warm lunch in the sometimes not-so-hearty, not-so-warm office.

Is it a bad sign for my writing, that the paranthesis in this blog post is longer than the actual text?