Dateline: January 7, 2022 Wild Boar Bolognese

I bought a 3 lb hunk of boar shoulder a while ago and decided this was the day it was going to get cooked.  I considered roasting it, but the meat was so lean, I thought it would be as tough as nails after a roast and a stringy braise wasn't going to do it for me either.

I decided on a bolognese sauce.  That meant I had to grind the meat up.  I needed 2 lbs for the recipe, and wanted that to be finely ground, so one lb of boar is a coarse grind, and the other 2 lbs are finely ground.  I wanted a texture closer to keema than to chili.

I chopped up that shoulder into planks that would fit in the throat of my grinder and went to town.  The meat was beautiful.  I used Hand Shaw's recipe for bolognese.  I love his recipes because they work and are very tasty.  He has a folksy way of writing about what he is making and I like that he also hunts for his food.  Not that this city girl would even contemplate doing that, but I like that he does.  

A couple surprising things about the recipe was that 1) not tomato forward, only 1 6 oz can of paste, and 2) the meat is NOT browned.  This gives the desired silky texture of keema which made this sauce so satisfying.

Of course, I only took one photo, naturally, which did not do the sauce justice.

Let the food processor do all the work with chopping the veggies finely.  I pulsed each one separately starting with the onion.  I could have pulsed the carrots a bit more, as you can see a couple of tidbits in the photo.  I did not have whole milk, I had half and half, so that is what I used.  I think I would have only used 1/2 c instead of the full 1 c called for.  The addition of the freshly grated nutmeg was outstanding.  It gave the sauce a bit of mystery whilst cooking.

This was served over orecchietti pasta along with a salad to chopped celery, cucumber, sweet onions, and tomatoes dressed with lemon and oil.  A very lovely dinner!