A few weeks back I had a great opportunity to recreate a stunning recipe designed by Andy Fenner. I made a booboo and didn’t add enough wine, so I couldn’t cook my springbok for the full four hours. But luckily for me, while it wasn’t as melt-in-your-mouth as I was hoping, it wasn’t tough at all. I did find the recipe a little salty, but overall it was delicious. See recipe below, the italics are my comments.
Coffee-rubbed shoulder of springbok, with Zonnebloem Shiraz Mourvèdre Viognier
Ingredients
- 1 shoulder of springbok, including the bone (available from Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants in Kloof Street in Cape Town and other specialty butchers)
- 1 cup top-quality ground coffee
- ½ Tbs turmeric
- 1 Tbs white pepper
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 Tbs smoked paprika
- ½ cup coarse salt I would use a ¼ cup, you can always add more
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 4 to 6 cloves of garlic
- Zonnebloem Shiraz Mourvèdre Viognier
- Flat-leaf parsley
Method
Preheat the oven to 150˚C. Make incisions in the meat and fill with the cloves of garlic. Combine the ground coffee, turmeric, white pepper, brown sugar, smoked paprika, coarse salt and cayenne pepper in a bowl and season the shoulder of springbok with this rub. Just use some of it, the rest keep tightly bottled for future use. Place in a roasting dish and moisten the meat with a generous amount of Zonnebloem Shiraz Mourvèdre Viognier. A LOT. Use at least half a bottle. Cover the meat and roast for 4 hours. Remove from the oven and let the meat rest for 10 minutes. Slice and garnish with flat-leaf parsley. I don’t think it needed the parsley.
To go with the meat, I made green beans and cauliflower mash:
Steam the green beans for 4 minutes.
Break apart and steam two heads of cauliflower for 12 minutes. Melt a knob of butter in a pot. Pop the cauliflower in, and half a cup of the water from steaming, and mash. If you are feeling adventurous add some another knob of butter and 300ml fresh cream. SERVE.
PS: Zonnebloem’s 2010 Shiraz Mourvèdre Viognier, a fragrant and generously flavoured red, succulent with ripe berry flavours and notes of pepper. Made by Bonny van Niekerk, using grapes from vineyards in Stellenbosch Kloof, Devon Valley and the Helderberg, sourced from long-standing growers who have been supplying Zonnebloem over generations. It has been aged in wood for 12 months, using a combination of new and second-fill oak.
