Fleischnakas - Meat rolls from Alsace

After a pot-au-feu, usually we get a lot of leftovers of meat. How to use them? Making Fleischnaka is a yummy recipe! The direct translation would mean "snails of meat", but acutally it is much more like "meat rolls".

Ingredients:

For the stuffing:

Leftovers of Pot-au-Feu meat (cold)

For 500g of meat:

2 eggs

2 shallots

parsil

salt and pepper

For the noodle dough:

500g of flour 

5 eggs

10g of salt

a little bit of water

For the cooking:

A nut of butter

1l. of beef stock or the stock of the pot-au-feu

First prepare the noodle dough. Mix all the ingredients together to get a firm, smooth dough. And keep refrigerated for 2 hours.

Then, prepare the stuffing: Take off the fat from the meat and mince it with the shallots, the parsil.

Mix all together with the eggs, salt and pepper.

After 2 hours, roll out the noodle dough very thin and spread the stuffing on. Then roll it and slice it (3 to 4 cm wide).

 

 

Fry each side in butter and then boil into the stock for 20 mins.

It is then ready to eat with the stock as a soup or without just with a salad. Enjoy !

 

With the remaining dough, you can make noodle: just roll out the dough very very thin and cut very thin noodle. Cook into boiling salted water for 10mins. It is yummy with a stew or just with a nut of butter!

A traditional French stew: the Pot-au-feu

The Pot-au-feu is a popular winter dish in France. It is composed of a tasty veggie-beef stock, various beef cuts and veggies. The secret is a very slow, slow cooking... for at least 3 hours.

Ingredients (for 6 servings):

- 3kg beef: brisket, chuch steak, shin, gravy beef and/or blade; use 2 to 3 different cuts (this time I used brisket and shin)

- 6 marrow bones

- 5l. water

- 1 big onion picked with 4 cloves

- 2 garlic cloves

- 4 carots

- 1 or 2 turnip

- 1 white gabbage

- 3 leeks

- 8 potatoes

- 3 baie leaves, thym

- salt

Method:

Wash the meat under cold water and put into a large pot. Cover with cold water. Add the onion, the garlic and the green part of the leeks. Put on the low heat (lid on). Let cook slowly for 2 hours. Every 30 mins, remove the foam.

Salt after one hour. Do not salt the meat or the water before, otherwise the stock will be bland.

Prepare the veggies: peel off the carots and the turnips and chunk them. Chunk also the leeks and the gabbage.

After 2 hours, take the leek out. And add the baie leaves, a pinch of thym and the carots.

10 mins later, the turnips,

10 mins later, the gabbage and the leeks (only the white part). Check the seasoning.

Let cook for 30 to 40 extra mins until the veggies are all cooked.

10 mins before the end of cooking, add the marrow bones.

Boil the potatoes separately.

And now?

As an entry, eat the soup with or without veggie

As a main course, drain the veggies and the meat and serve onto a plate with mustard and/or horseraddish. The marrow is delicious spreaded on a slice of bread with some mustard or just coarse salt.

The leftovers are even tastier (but remove the grease when cold) and can be eaten as they are, warm or cold with a vinaigrette (1 Tbsp mustard, 2 Tbsp oil, 1.5Tps red wine vinegar, salt, pepper).

The leftovers of meat can be used in a shepard pie, in a potato salad, in Fleischnaka  (kind of meat rolls)... many possibilities!!
The stock is very tasty and can be used for your future dishes. I make ice blocks of it so that I can use as much as I need when ever I need (rather than buy stock with preservatives...).

I hope you will enjoy this winter stew! Let me a comment whether you have any question!