Very unseasonable I know but I cooked venison twice in the last two weeks.

From my little bit of local exposure I am frequently consulted about various culinary problems. The most frequently asked question is;
“I have been given/have shot/just found in my freezer, a leg of venison, what in the name of the Lord am I going to do with it!”
My answer was frequently extremely unhelpful, as I would ask back; “Have you any idea how old the animal was?”
The truth of the matter is that wild venison can come in any degree of toughness.
Wild mountainy deer who have been going for a while and are a bit long in the antler can be as tough as shoe leather and need long hours of slow cooking to tenderise.
Young farmed animals, still in their velvet, can, on the other hand be as tender as veal.
By usual answer to these questions was to stew/casserole the meat and keep checking it until it was tender-being prepared for that to take anything from one to six hours.
My chickens came home to roost a couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine arrived with a haunch of venison for me.
I accepted it gratefully and then froze it and wished I had someone to ring to get a way of cooking it.
It was then that I realised that the Buck had finally stopped at me.
(Truer than I thought as I afterwards discovered that the same haunch had visited quite a few Waterford freezers before it reached mine.)

About two weeks ago I realised that the pre-summer visiting season was upon us, when we all spend time departing this country in search of the sun, and to fulfil my obligations I was going to have to give two fairly large dinner parties within two weeks.
An expensive business this, what was I going to feed these people on?
Then I remembered the Venison.

To get some idea of its age I sawed off a bit of the frozen meat, thawed it and fried it up.
It was quite edible, chewy but not too tough.
This decided me that I would cook it in the oven in a pot with some liquid.
Lesson number two, this time from experience, is that venison is a very lean meat, very healthy but (unless hung to putrefaction) not enormously flavoursome therefore you need to include a piece of something fatty with the mix.
The third point I picked up from Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall who said not to use too much wine as this tends to dry the meat but, the flavour of wine goes extremely well with venison. One more thing decided me on my method of tackling the animal.
At Christmas I had bought some fresh Chestnuts, with intentions to use them in the turkey but forgot so these were going to come in handy now as they have a definite affinity with venison. (I actually padded these out with some dried chestnuts in the end as I discovered that quite a few of my Christmas ones had rotted in their shells-and I couldn’t tell the difference in the finished product, just don’t forget to pre-soak the dried ones for about one hour before using)
One final product, which I found in my freezer as I was hauling out the venison, was a small box of frozen sloes, kept for next years gin but now sacrificed for some Sloe Jelly to serve with the Venison.
I then had to tackle the problem of vegetables to serve with the beast, summer vegetables seemed unsuitable, so I cooked some all-year-around choices and served a puree of Carrot and Sweet Potato and my recently discovered Nell Flaherty’s Beautiful Cabbage.At dinner party number one I did some spiced roast potatoes by tossing the spuds in cumin and coriander after I had par boiled them before roasting.
They were delicious.
At dinner party number two I served some new potatoes I had been seduced into buying at a farm gate.
These cooked almost instantly into a sort of grey tasteless mush and were deemed not a success.

Here are the recipes.

Venison Stew with Chestnuts and Juniper.
(for 6 to 8)

2 kg (4 lbs) Leg of Venison, trimmed of all skin and sinew
250g (½ lb) Streaky Bacon
350g (12 oz.) Shallots or small onions
1 tablespoon Black Peppercorns
1 tablespoon Juniper Berries
2 tablespoons Flour
Olive oil for cooking
1 bottle Red Wine
300ml (½ pint) good chicken or beef stock)
1 tablespoon sloe or red current jelly

First pour the bottle of wine into a large pan and boil down until reduced to a half its original quantity.
Cut the venison into large chunks.
Crush the peppercorns and the juniper berries coarsely (in a mortar or a liquidizer)
Mix these with the flour and toss the chunks of venison in this until well coated.
Fry these on a high heat in olive oil until they are brown and crusty.
Put to one side.
In this pan fry the bacon (cut in chunks) until brown and crisp then take these from the pan and fry the peeled shallots in this fat until brown.
Put the venison, bacon, shallots, reduced wine, the stock and the jelly into a casserole and either cook very carefully on top of the oven on a very low heat or in the oven at about 150C, 300F Gas 2, for as long as it takes to become tender.
(In my case it took about one hour)
Do not forget that this dish improves by being re-heated, and, is much better made the day before if possible.
Serve with some more of the jelly separately.

Carrot and Sweet Potato Puree

500g (1 lb.) Carrots
500g (1 lb.) Sweet Potatoes
2 medium Onions
60g (2 oz.) Butter
Salt and Pepper

Peel and chunk the Carrots and the Sweet Potato and peel and slice the onions.
Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pot with a lid.
Put the vegetables and the butter on the lowest possible heat in this pot.
Season well with salt and black pepper and cook slowly until tender.
Either mash these with a potato masher or puree in a food processor.

This can also be made successfully with turnip or celeriac in place of the sweet potato.