I know, I know. I have been extremely lax lately. Busy in reality, but lax online; healthy, no doubt, but frustrating. My busy, busy, rush, rush life combined with my demand for good eats has meant some simplification in the kitchen. Recent life has been a blur of fish filets, chicken breasts and steaks. Then something magical happened. I was picking up more of the same at the local Albert Heijn which, here in Holland, is just your run of the mill Vons/Safeway/Ralph’s/Whatever nothing fancy supermarket chain, when I saw some nice looking steaks on sale, labeled with words even more foreign than usual. Knowing that the staff would be of no help, I approached a local shopper and asked if they could translate. Granted, the surprise for you went out the window when I titled this article, but I was shocked to find out that it was ostrich…something that I had always thought of as a luxurious specialty item. Yet here it was at AH, six bucks for a pair of decent (by non-Texan standards) steaks.

Never having had experience with ostrich in the kitchen, I read up a bit. Similar to beef in taste but significantly healthier; tough if overcooked, best in the rare to medium-rare range; extremely resilient and easy to raise, so usually ‘natural’ by default. This stuff sounds like a winner; time to fire it up!

A little salt and pepper is really all that is necessary to season the meat. Grab a pan, throw in a splash of olive oil to coat the bottom and get some heat under it. Standard, no? A couple of minutes on each side sealed the meat (which browned beautifully). Transfer the meat to a moderate oven for a few minutes to finish it off. I won’t offer you cooking times because I have no idea how thick a cut you’ll find, nor how red a meat you can handle. That said, my inch and a quarter thick steaks were just about right after about 7 minutes in the oven. That was just enough time to throw some red wine (I had a decent $5 bottle of Zinfandel), rosemary, pepper, garlic and a wee pinch of sugar into the pan for deglazing and reduction. A fast hand and a wooden spoon got the pan scrapings into the wine, which was then reduced to about 1/3 of its original volume. Together with the meat and a side of greens, I had an amazing 10 minute meal (and the deglazing of the pan cut a couple of minutes off of my cleanup time!).

The sale had a couple more days to it and I now have a freezer full of ostrich and a wicked new addiction.