Wild Game « (y)our food choices™

Elk, the other red meat.

There are very few things that Sarah Palin and I would ever agree upon, but venison being a superior meat to America’s slaughterhouse beef is one on which we definitely would see eye-to-eye. We would probably even swap a few recipes and the only debate we would have, about the meat that is, would be who makes the best chili. My chocolate cherry chili would win, hands down! But I’ll leave that blog for another day. This one is about our Elk roast dinner last night with our good friend Mary. The small party was supposed to include another friend, and artist, Zannah Noe, who’s work is displayed throughout our apartment. Unfortunately, we received a text from her at the last minute letting us know she was under the weather and wouldn’t be making it. Feel better Zannah!

We received the elk roast from Steve’s father, Karl, who lives to hunt and fish. Most people would be turned off by the smell and taste of wild meat, and I must admit that I was once that way. But over the years of substituting venison for beef, I can honestly say that I prefer the musky taste of it over the flavorless greasy beef that comes from the grocery store. It’s also nice to know exactly where the animal I’m consuming came from; what type of food it grazed on; and that it’s death was more humane than the conveyer belts of cows that line up to be slaughtered, day and night.

Is there anything more comforting than a big bowl of mashed potatoes?

The recipe for the roast came from Cook’s Illustrated, Simple Pot Roast, which you can only get online by being a member, but I’ll give you the run-down at the bottom of the post—just don’t tell Chris Kimball. The moment I unwrapped the elk roast I knew it was going to be a great meal. The meat was lean and firm, and there was no fat or sinew to cut away. The only prep work necessary was to tie the meat together and pat it dry with paper towels before placing it in a hot stock pot with vegetable oil.

As decadent as ice cream with a little less guilt.

With the pot roast we serve mashed potatoes and bleu cheese popovers, a variation of the popovers that Steve has become very fond of. Unfortunately they didn’t rise all that well, probably due to a reduction in the oven temperature, but were still quite tasty. For desert, we served a cardamom and cinnamon scented frozen yogurt, that was topped with orange segments and pistachios. It had a bit of middle eastern flare to it, but the oranges are so abundant right now and we have a lot of cardamom and cinnamon in our pantry, I thought it would be a great use for them. It was also a little lighter then say, an American cherry pie, or even traditional vanilla ice cream. The conversation was the best thing about the dinner. We really enjoyed getting to know Mary a little better and can’t wait to go over to her house and help her in her garden.

We’re hoping to have more dinner parties in the future; giving our friends the chance to try venison and some wonderful grass-fed beef.

Simple Elk Pot Roast

(adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

1 boneless elk roast (3-4 pounds)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 medium onion, finely diced

4 large carrots (1 finely diced, the other 3 cut into ½ inch slices)

1 celery rib, finely diced

1 pound button mushrooms, quartered

3 gloves garlic, minced

2 cups beef broth (homemade preferred)

3 sprig fresh thyme, tied together

1-2 cups water

2 large turnips, peeled and cut into wedges (6-8 wedges each turnip)

¼ cup red wine

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position. Tie the roast with cooking twine and pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed stockpot until oil is shimmering. Place the roast in pot and sear until a nice dark brown develops on all four side, 8-10 minutes. Reduce the heat if there is too much smoke and add more oil if meat is very lean and the bottom of the pan dries out. Transfer the roast to a clean plate and add the onions, diced carrots, celery, and mushrooms. Sautee until the vegetables start to brown, stirring occasionally, 8-10 minutes. Add the garlic, cooking until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the broth and water, scraping up the bottom of the pan. Return the roast to the pan and any juices that have accumulated. Turn the temperature up and bring to a boil. Add the thyme, cover the top with foil and then place the lid on top. Place the pot in the oven and cook for 3 ½ – 4 hours. Every 30 minutes turn the roast over on each side.

After about 2 ½ hours add the sliced carrots and the turnips. Making sure that the vegetables are submerged in the cooking liquid.

When the roast is tender remove the pot from the oven and remove the roast from the pot. Tent the roast with foil and remove the carrot slices and turnips. If a lot of fat has accumulated, skim from the top. Then place the pot on the stove and reduce the cooking liquid to about 1 ½ cups. Add the red wine and reduce a few more minutes.

Cut the string from the roast and slice it into 1-inch pieces. Arrange the roast and the vegetables on a warmed serving platter. Serve with horseradish cream and sauce.

Horseradish Cream

¾ cup sour cream

2 finely chopped green onions

1-2 tablespoons (or more) prepared horseradish

Mix all together and serve with roast elk.

Cinnamon-Cardamom Frozen Yogurt

(adapted from Mark Bittman’s Basic Vanilla Frozen Yogurt)

1 ½ cups whole milk

3 cardamom pods

1 cinnamon stick

¾ cups sugar

4 egg yolks

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt

Heat the milk in a pan with the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods, until just barely warm. Place a lid on the pan and let seep for 30 minutes. Discard cinnamon and cardamom pods. Add half the sugar, heat until steam barely rises, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Meanwhile beat the egg yolks and other half of sugar with a pinch of salt until light yellow and very thick. Slowly add a little of the warmed milk, whisking constantly so as not to cook the eggs. Adding more milk continue to whisk until all the milk has been add. Transfer the mixture back into the pan and place on the stove over low-medium heat, stir constantly until thickened. Remove from heat and stain through a mesh sieve to remove any cooked egg.

Place the bowl on an ice bath to cool, about 20-30 minutes. Once the custard is cool add the yogurt and whisk together. Place the yogurt mixture in an ice cream maker and allow to mix for about 25-30 minutes. Remove from the tub and store in a freezer safe container for at least 2 hours before serving. If the frozen yogurt becomes too hard to serve leave at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before serving.

Serve with orange slices, pistachios, honey, or any desired topping.

Red Curry w/ Wild Venison

Wild Meat

I just returned from a quick trip to Idaho and with me came a cooler full of wild meat – deer, antelope, elk and pheasant. The folks’ freezer is packed to overflowing with this season’s hunting bounty. There’s little room for the upcoming holiday fixings they’ll need to freeze so they took advantage of my visit to do a little purging. Lucky us!

I wasn’t a huge fan of wild meat as a kid but that has changed over time as we’ve learned to cook it in ways that highlight its rich flavors and lean texture. This curry adaptation is a perfect use for wild deer meat.

The beef called for in Joyce Jue’s recipe for Gaeng Mussaman Nuea, a Thai peanut curry, cooks in coconut milk until tender, about one hour (Savoring Southeast Asia, a Williams-Sonoma cookbook). Once cooked through, deer meat becomes tough and has to braise for some time before the protein fibers soften enough to enjoy eating. Tough deer meat gives your jaw quite a workout. We adjusted the cooking time a bit on this recipe to account for the toughness of the meat. Luckily, the meat was clean of sinew and silver skin so the finished dish was fork tender.

I added a cooking step to draw the complex flavors of the wild venison out of the meat and into the coconut milk. Browning the meat first creates depth of flavor while taking the wild edge off the finished curry. In addition to browning the meat, I added ingredients not called for in Joyce’s recipe but they work as adjuncts to the base ingredients in the curry paste. The modifications are noted in the recipe that follows. In the meantime, take inspiration in T. Edward Nickens’ thoughtful post over at Field & Stream. It’s a nice reminder of why deer meat has always mattered.

The Ingredients

Wild Venison Curry

2 cans (13 ½ fl oz) coconut milk

2 lbs wild venison stew meat, cut into 1 ¾ – inch pieces

3 tablespoons red curry paste

1 large potato, peeled and cut into 1 ½ -inch cubes

1 yellow onion, cut into 6 wedges

1 2-inch long piece of galangal, peeled and sliced into thin coins

1 2-inch long piece of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into julienne

1 stalk lemon grass, cut into 2 inch pieces

¼ cup unsalted roasted peanuts

2 tablespoons fish sauce, or as needed

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1/3 – cup tamarind water (or plain water)*

2 cinnamon sticks

6 cardamom pods, toasted

3 bay leaves

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Pomegranate seeds for garnish

Start with the cans of coconut milk. Don’t shake them before opening. Once opened, skim off the top ½ cup from the top of each can and set aside the heavy cream aside in a small sauce pan for later.

I started by heating a few tablespoons of grape seed oil a heavy stockpot over medium high heat. The cleaned, diced meat was sprinkled with salt and then fried in batches to brown, trying not to steam the pieces. Once all the meat is nicely browned and you have a nice fond in the pan, add the remaining canned coconut milk as well as the ginger and galangal to the pan. Bring to boil then reduce heat to a steady simmer and cook uncovered for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally and adding a little water from time to time to prevent the pan from drying and the coconut milk from scorching.

In the meantime, heat the coconut cream over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Gently boil until the oil begins to separate from the cream, about 5-8 minutes. Add the curry paste and cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is fragrant and the oil separates from the paste, another 5-8 minutes.

Add the curry coconut cream mixture to the pot holding the venison along with the potato, onion, peanuts, 2 tablespoons fish sauce, brown sugar, tamarind water, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, and bay leaves. Cook, uncovered, until the vegetables are tender, 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning with curry, fish sauce or sugar. Stir in lemon juice and transfer to serving dish. Serve immediately.

*We didn’t make tamarind water this time around, but the recipe is easy enough and the tamarind paste called for in the recipe should be readily available in specialty markets in most cities. If you want to go for it, look for tamarind pulp sold in blocks. To make about 1 ½ cups tamarind water, cut up ½ pound of the pulp into small pieces, place in a bowl, and add 2 cups boiling water. Mash the pulp to separate the fibers and seeds, then let stand for 15 minutes or so, stirring two or three times. Pour the liquid through a fine-mesh sieve placed over a bowl, pushing against the pulp with the back of a spoon and scraping the underside of the sieve. Transfer to a jar and refrigerate for up to 4 days or freeze in an ice-cube tray for up to 1 month.