Wild boar nut with celery puree

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 750 g wild boar nuts
• 5 onions, approx. 650 g
• 150 g dried meat
• 150 ml dry sherry
• 500 ml red wine, dry
• 400 ml water
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 1 bay leaf, dried
• 4 juniper berries
• 10 peppercorns (Tasmanian mountain pepper)
• 4 allspice berries
• 3 carnations
• 1 cinnamon stick(s)
• 2 tbsp clarified butter for frying
• 30 g butter, ice-cold to thicken the sauce
• 1 kg celery
• 350 g potatoes
• 20 g crème fraîche
• 40 g butter
• Salt and pepper, black (Tasmanian mountain pepper)
• e.g. nutmeg, freshly grated
• Cranberries or pickled black walnuts
• 1 handful of walnut kernels, roughly chopped

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Cooking/baking time approx. 2 hours; Total time approx. 3 hours

First, trim the wild boar’s anus, i.e., cut away the silver skin. Remove the skins from the onions and chop them into large pieces. Peel the garlic cloves and gently press them down with the heel of your hand, or if you’re too weak for that, use a meat tenderizer. Cut the rind off the jerked beef, but keep it; it will be fried with the meat; this adds a bit more flavor. Cut the jerked beef into strips about 5 mm thick. Preheat the oven to 180 °C (top/bottom heat). Heat the clarified butter in a suitably sized ovenproof cooking dish (roasting pan) and sear the wild boar’s anus on all sides for about 3 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the onions and garlic, along with the jerked beef and rind, to the remaining frying fat and fry vigorously; the onions can take on some color. Deglaze with the sherry and allow it to reduce. Now add the red wine in portions, about 150 ml, and allow it to reduce. Do this twice more until about 500 ml of red wine has been used up. Now pour in the stock. Add the spices, but only 6 seeds of the mountain peppercorn; the rest is ground to taste. Stir briefly and place the wild boar nuts on top. Put the lid on and braise everything in the oven for 90 minutes. For the puree, peel the potatoes and cut into cubes approximately 1 x 1 cm. Peel the celery and dice them like the potatoes. Steam the celery and potato cubes in a sieve insert of a pressure cooker for about 10 minutes. Then, while still hot, press them through a potato ricer into the hot pressure cooker so the mixture can steam off nicely. Then mix with the butter and crème fraîche. Season to taste with salt, a pinch of mountain peppercorn, and freshly grated nutmeg. After 90 minutes, remove the roasting pan from the oven, wrap the meat in aluminum foil, and keep warm in the oven using the residual heat. Strain the sauce into a saucepan, reheat, and toss with the butter from the freezer. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Thinly slice the meat. Place a dollop of celery puree on warmed plates and sprinkle some roughly chopped toasted walnuts on top. Place the meat in front of the plate and drizzle with the sauce. You can add more if you like. Enjoy with cranberries, if you like, or, like me, with my own thinly sliced, canned black walnuts.