A friend moving out of her apartment for a few months of travel stashed about three pounds of ground Kitikmeot musk ox in my freezer. After she returned, she offered to share it if I could conjure up a suitable idea for a recipe. For the chance to cook and enjoy musk ox, one of my favourite "country foods", I certainly could. Most ground musk ox ends up as hamburger on the grill—certainly tasty but a bit uninspired. Meatballs are a better option—at a barbeque last summer I enjoyed delicious caribou meatballs with a cloudberry sauce, which another friend made from an animal she herself had harvested near Baker Lake. But I'd often thought about incorporating country food into a sauce for pasta. The most famous of Italian sauces based on ground meat is ragù alla bolognese, a thick and rich concoction that begins with ground beef and pork. Why not a ragù alla moda di Kitikmeot?
A quick word for those of you who've never tried musk ox: do. The Inuit and their ancestors have appreciated its taste for thousands of years—and our own ancestors likely did as well, for musk ox once roamed the whole of northern Eurasia during the Ice Age. Like all wild game, it's lean and tangy, but it has its own special soft and earthy flavour. You can order it directly from Kitikmeot Foods in Cambridge Bay, administrative centre of the Kitikmeot region and the world's musk-ox capital, where my friend found her ground meat. Various cuts are available, from the succulent tenderloins I once bought, to a bone-in hip cut yet another friend of mine slowly braised to incredible tenderness as though it were a brisket. Musk ox is even delicious raw—as the Inuit like it.
Ingredients
To serve six as a traditional Italian first main course or primo piatto, or three to four as a non-traditional main course, you'll need:
- 1 medium-size carrot
- 1 medium-size stalk celery
- 1 medium-size red onion
- 1 pound ground musk ox
- 2 cups crushed plum tomatoes
- ½ cup white wine
- ½ cup beef broth
- ¼ cup whipping cream
- 1 pound fettucine
- butter
- olive oil
- salt
- pepper
Northmart normally carries canned crushed plum tomatoes. If they aren't on the shelf, you can crush canned whole plum tomatoes yourself. The easiest way is to pass them through a food mill—but you can also open them with a knife, remove the seeds, cut them into pieces, and crush them with a fork. Use the liquid from the can if the mash is too dry. In a perfect world, you'd begin from fresh tomatoes, but they must be plum or "Italian" tomatoes, which are fleshy, juicy and have fewer seeds. I've never seen fresh plum tomatoes in Iqaluit. Avoid canned "tomato sauce", and never use prepared "spaghetti sauce".
Because wine is a precious commodity in Nunavut, you can omit it if need be. The ragù will be more flavourful for it, though, whether you can spare red wine or white. If you're lucky enough to have a choice, use a dry white wine.
You can also omit the whipping cream, which isn't strictly necessary for the dish. Table cream, measuring around 20% milk fat rather than 30-40%, could be a lighter substitute, but since the sauce is meant to be rich, why bother?
The long, ribbon-shaped fettucine, also called tagliatelle, are customary with a ragù of this sort. They're normally available in Iqaluit, but if you can't find them, spaghetti are the best substitute. Avoid pastas less robust than spaghetti, such as the delicate capellini or "angel's hair", which call for equally delicate sauces. If for some reason you can't find—or simply don't prefer—fettucine or spaghetti, but you're intent on making this dish, the substantial rigatoni would be the best choice among short pastas.
Remember, use only olive oil with Italian dishes. No other kind of oil will do, unless you simply have no access to olive oil.
Preparation
Peel the carrot and chop it finely. I find the easiest method for chopping carrot is to grate it first as though for a carrot salad. You won't want to discern carrot as a separate flavour in the sauce—or celery or onion for that matter—so take care to mince it well.
Chose one of the larger, whitish inner stalks of celery with leaves—the heart of the celery is more tender and flavourful than the greener outer stalks. Chop it finely together with its leaves—I like to split it lengthwise along the grain into thin strands before chopping it.
Peel the onion by halving it from tip to root, slicing the cap from each half, and removing the outermost layer just under the paper. Chop it finely by laying each half flat and making a series of close parallel or radial cuts inward toward the root and a second series crosswise. The onion will then fall apart into small pieces, which you'll probably have to continue to mince.
Combine the three chopped aromatic vegetables together to make what the French call a mirepoix. The amount of onion should equal the combined amounts of carrot and celery.
Treatment
Set a large saucepan on medium heat and combine the butter and olive oil. The mirepoix and lean meat will call for a generous portion, so use at least ⅓ cup in total, and about twice as much butter as olive oil. The main purpose of the oil is to help keep the butter from burning.
Once the butter and oil are hot, add the mirepoix and the ground musk ox. Use a wooden spatula or spoon to break apart the musk ox and mix it with the butter, oil and aromatic vegetables—you should aim to create small bits of meat, without any large aggregated chunks. Saute for about ten minutes, then mix in the crushed plum tomatoes and wine, season to taste with salt and pepper, and allow the ragù to reduce until it is relatively dry—around fifteen minutes—stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Finally, rehydrate with the beef broth, then cover the pan and allow the ragù to continue to simmer and reduce for about 30 minutes so its flavours can combine. Stir it occasionally to help it blend well.
In the meantime, set a large, covered pot of salted water on high heat for the fettucine. Use a pasta insert if you have one, and if your pot is large enough to accommodate both the insert and the long pasta. Once the water has reached a rolling boil—and about the time you're ready to check on the ragù again—add the fettucine. If your pot is not quite as tall as the pasta is long, it's best to hold the pasta at one end together in your fist, place as much as possible in the water, and spin out the individual strands in a circular motion. Use a wooden spoon to bend the strands gently, submerge them all as quickly as possible, and cover the pot again until a lively boil returns.
While the pasta boils, uncover the ragù and allow it to reduce further if needed. It should be thick but not dry. If you're using cream, lower the heat before mixing it into the ragù. The ragù must absorb the cream completely and reduce once again, so you may wish to delay cooking the fettucine for a few minutes.
As I've mentioned before, the only way to cook pasta successfully is to taste it frequently. Fully-cooked pasta should still have a slight bite to it—a texture Italians call al dente, meaning to the teeth. Make sure you test a strand every minute or so towards the end of the cooking time and you should be happy with the result.
When the pasta is done, drain it well and combine it with the ragù. Long pastas tend to clump and tangle, so you may find it easier to combine the drained pasta and ragù in stages in a large serving bowl. Whatever your method, be sure you combine them very thoroughly.
Service
Serve the pasta immediately in wide, deep bowls. Offer a grating cheese made from cow's milk for those who want it—parmigiano reggiano or grana padano are appropriate choices and are normally available in Iqaluit. Grate the cheese freshly for the occasion. If all that's available is pre-prepared, powdery "parmesan" cheese, I'd refrain from offering cheese at all.
If you can, pair the rich ragù with a drier, full-bodied wine. If you prefer white, opt perhaps for an oaky Chardonnay. If red, don't go overboard—a more supple Bordeaux might suit the dish better than a solid Cabernet Sauvignon varietal. Most Italian reds based primarily on Sangiovese or Nebbiolo would match well. If I could, I might try a typical red from the area around Bologna, where this style of ragù originates, such as a Colli Bolognesi Barbera.
