Brain bones in tagine

Category: Meat dishes

Ingredients
Brain bones	twelve pieces
Gravy after tagine	average

Cooking method

My acquaintance with sugar bones began in childhood. My father, of Armenian-Russian blood, adored bone marrow, and, being without complexes on how to behave in a cultured refined society, in the family at the table he was happy to knock and suck the brain out of the bone cooked with meat for borscht or for pasta in the Navy style. , sprinkled the brain with salt and black pepper, and relished this delicacy with a blissful look. Sometimes he shared this with me, and I will not say that in early childhood I did not like it. But, as you know, with age and over time, a person's tastes sometimes radically change ...
As a teenager, I found more and more confirmation that bone marrow is delicious. Having read from cover to cover the entire collected works of the romantic Thomas Mein Reed, I still vaguely remember an excerpt from his novel In Search of the White Buffalo. Read this passage to the end - it has more truth than fiction ...
All three were going about their own business, when suddenly the attention of the brothers was attracted by Basil's exclamation. It was a cry of joy, followed by a wild laugh, like the laugh of a madman.
François and Lucien looked up in dismay, thinking that a misfortune had happened: they could not understand why Basil was laughing loudly at such a time, under such gloomy circumstances. Looking at him, they saw that he continued to laugh, swinging a tomahawk over his head, as if triumphant.
- Come here, François, Luce! He shouted. - Come here! Ha ha ha! Here's dinner for three hungry! Ha ha ha! What are we stupid! We are as stupid as a donkey who preferred to eat hay when bread and butter lay nearby. Look here, and here, and here! Here's dinner for you! Ha ha ha!
Lucien and François approached him and, seeing that Basil was pointing at a large bison bone and turning it in all directions, immediately understood the reason for his amusement: the bones were full of brain.
- Whole pounds of brain! Basile continued. - The most delicious of all bison! It would be enough for dinner for a dozen like us, and we were going to go to bed hungry or, even worse, starve to death in the midst of abundance! And we rode for three days among such treasures! Yes, we deserve to starve to death for such stupidity! .. Well, help me take these bones to the fire - I'll show you how to make dinner.
The bison has eight marrow bones containing several pounds of this substance. As Basil heard from the old hunters, the bison's bone marrow is considered the most delicious part of the animal, and it is rarely left behind after killing a bison. The best way to cook is to simply bake the marrow into bones, although Indians and Trappers often eat it raw. The stomachs of our young hunters were not strong enough for this, and two bones of the hind legs were thrown into the fire and covered with hot ash.
Usually, the bone marrow is either very fond of, or completely squeamish about it. The French call the bone marrow "foie gras for the poor" because they value its taste very much, but it is not expensive at all, and almost anyone can afford it.
If it's so tasty and so cheap, why don't we eat that every day, you ask? Yes, for a very simple reason. Bone marrow is delicious, but it sits inside a large bone that still needs to be cut to get to that brain. And in this matter of cutting bones, the butcher's ax is not an assistant here, because no matter how sharp the ax is, after it there are a lot of small bones and chips that are very problematic to wash out of the bone with the brain.And to eat such a delicate substance constantly taking out small bones from the mouth is still a pleasure. Therefore, here a culinary band saw comes to the rescue, which cuts the bone practically without fragments, evenly and cleanly. There are such band saws in many large supermarkets, which also sell meat products. And sometimes (but not very often) such brain bones, already neatly cut and packed, can be found on the shelves. If you have such whole marrow bones, then you can ask for help in sawing in the meat departments of such markets.
I must admit right away that my recipe is “dishonest,” since it involves a weighty ingredient left over after preparing another dish. Yesterday I cooked a tagine of four beef shanks, sawn a la "ossobuco" and a lamb shoulder chopped into four pieces.
And after almost all the meat from the dish has been eaten, there is still a lot of tasty aromatic gravy left. And in the freezer "quite by accident" there were brain bones cut by a band saw and packed in the market ... These bones of mine just did not fit in such tagine right away ...
In the gravy took part: Uzbek apricots, and pitted raisins "Ladies fingers". And also Uzbek lemon, dried figs, caramelized onions, stalked celery, a mixture of spices "Decor Masala Bright", turmeric powder, Salted chili peppers (paste), saffron, lots of chopped carrots ...
The bones were purchased ahead of time and stored in the freezer compartment. By the way, such bones with a brain are a very perishable product, and they must be used either immediately or frozen in the refrigerator. And then - the trouble ... I already went through this ...
Brain bones, immediately from the freezer, fry in a non-stick frying pan, with a small amount of vegetable oil, for a short time, from all sides, then from below and above, until a slight hint of roastiness appears.
Why NON-stick frying pan? It's just that the bones are very inaccurate in the pan, and the non-stick surface here can suffer a lot ...
Gently put the bones in tagine with gravy, add a glass of salted hot water with a dissolved pinch of saffron, close the lid, and simmer it all for one and a half to two hours ... Although the consistency of the bone marrow is such that it almost does not pull on tastes and aromas, but in this case it can be consumed without regaling it with anything else - the aroma and taste of the gravy follow it ...
And then ... Then comes the mortal sin - gluttony ... And we sinned with this delicacy without any regard for any taboos, restrictions, and prejudices ... Especially when this goes with a glass of good soulful drink. Well, in fact - how much that life ...
Delicious!