Chocolate with salt

It's amazing how time flies. I didn't even realise, so much time passed already, since my last post.
First, my whole family was fighting a severe stomach bug and it took me a solid week to recover. My baby son just kept on getting sick, we then went on a short holiday and here we go, two months passed.
I must admit, I have veneration for bloggers. who manage to write frequently, some even several times a week. How are you mange to do it?
With my two little kids, my hands are quite full. And I must admit, my family is definitely my priority.
Additionally I'm constantly tiered lately; the lack of sleep from the last weeks is taking its tall and in the evenings I'm mostly way to tiered to have one straight thought, much less writing a post. But as usual I'm not holding back with excuses, shame on me.

The stomach bug was definitely a horrible time, especially when our weekly delivery of the fantastic organic fresh food from our Namibian farmers came and I saw it all, but felt nothing but nausea.
Additionally I won an ice cream competition, where you had to suggest a new summer taste. My idea was inspired by my favourite cake, the black forest cake - vanilla with cherries and chocolate chip. To my surprise I was one of the lucky winners and they delivered exact that ice cream to my house and I had to suffer for many days longing for it to taste, but fighting my nausea at the same time. I can't remember, when the last time I was so badly off.


I'm back with, what I would say, is my all Namibian dish, since all ingredients can be sourced here in Namibia. Parsley roots and pomegranates I'm even growing in my very own garden, although not the one I used here - they're just not ready yet to be used.



Oryx is THE Namibian game, we served it already at our wedding and we just love the taste of it. The one we've had this time, was, I suppose, from an older animal and had a very intensive odour and a very "gamy" taste. Maybe not to everybody's liking, but for me it worked extremely well with the delicate sweetness of the pomegranate sauce.
The parsley root with its natural sweetness, made it a perfect side dish to the game. And since I need a salad with almost every dish, apart from soups, I also had to dish up a small leafy salad.

Ingredients (for 2)

500 g Oryx fillet ( or other game)

200 ml water
50 ml pomegranate concentrate
1 small onion or shallot
1 garlic glove
seeds of 1/4 fresh pomegranate
1 tbsp unsalted butter

500 g fresh parsley roots
200 ml full cream milk
1 tsp lemon juice

salt
mixed pepper
oil (I used canola)

Peel the parsley roots, roughly cut them and bring in salted water to boil. Cook till tender.
Drain, then mash them. Mix with the milk and purée with a hand-held blender till smooth. Put it back to the stove and warm everything up. Add the lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper. Keep it warm for later.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and fry them translucent. Put aside.

Preheat the oven to 80° - 100°. You will need it to rest the meat and keep it warm.

Depending on the cut of your meat, you can portion it as needed. I divided my piece in 4 nice thick steaks.
Heat some oil in a pan on very high heat and fry the steaks to your liking. I love my meat more on the rare side, so I fried it 2-3 minutes per site, before placing on a plate and into the oven to rest.

Still on high heat, pour the water into the pan and scratch the residue of the meat  off. Add the prepared onions and garlic and pour in the pomegranate concentrate. Cook on high heat till the fluid reduces nicely ( around 3-5 minutes). Season with salt and pepper, melt the butter in and stir in the pomegranate seeds.

Arrange the parsley root mash with meat on the plate and douse with the pomegranate sauce. Serve with a leafy salad and

Enjoy!