17 January 2016

Spicy Tartare with Quail Eggs


Saturdays are usually shopping days in Germany. All the shops are open and people are going crazy. This is the day when you can see a line of  35 people waiting their turn to pay in any shop. On this day it is especially difficult to find a free table in a nice cafe. This is the day when you go to the grocery's store in order to buy food because on Sunday everything is closed (except a couple of shops on the railway station).  This is the day when I usually decide what to cook for the following days. In my shopping list there may be only staff that we really ran out of. The rest depends on what I see in the shop. Sometimes we are up to a good medium steak. The other days we just can't get enough of fish. This time we decided it was time for home-made tartare.

One of my tartare recipes you might have read here. As Oliver Strand mentioned in his article Steak Tartare Is the Dish of the Moment: A New Generation of Chefs Reinterprets the Classic "A dish that spent a few quiet decades on the menus of steak houses and French restaurants, tartare appealed to a sophisticated kind of adult who knew where to find his or her pleasure".

But this time I decided to make it with quail eggs instead of chicken. And you know why? 
Actually my uncle runs a small quail household in Ukraine and of course I was the one to get always a lot of quail eggs for free. And I love them. Because here are many benefits from eating quail eggs. Some of them are:
  • providing your body with easily assimilated calcium, boosting your immunity and your calcium, and increasing your hemoglobin levels;
  • by consuming them you get HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) instead of LDL (the bad kind.);
  • detox and cleaning from heavy metals;
  • not causing any kind of allergy - being hypoallergenic;
  • may be safely eaten raw as due to high body temperature quails are not suffering from common diseases as e.g. salmonellosis.

And the recipe is not only healthy and bullet-proof, but also easy and quick to make. So let's just do it and enjoy :)

Ingredients:
yields 2 portions
300 g minced beef for tartare
2 tbsp tabasco sauce
2 garlic cloves
6 quail eggs
1 small red onion
8 cornishons
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper and cayenne pepper
fresh baguette (our choice was onion baguette)
Chop red onions, cornishons, garlic. Mix it all in a bowl with meat, add the spices. As I've already mentioned couple of times, it is always possible to be creative at the kitchen. Maybe today you're up to spicy rather than mild. Go ahead! My choice was salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and ginger. With a sprinkle of Tabasco and Dijon mustard your tartare will be just incredible!!!
In the end pour in the eggs and mix well. Serve with fresh baguette or bread slices of your preference.

Enjoy your family launch or friends party or any other occasion with a delicious tartare!