Deer & Wild Rice with Raspberries

Not your everyday dinner.   And yes the photo looks quite pink, and it certainly was, that was the theme.  Don't bother trying this with ordinary meats such as beef, chicken or pork, I don't think it would work.  It does however work well with wild meats so maybe wild swine, if you can get it, would be okay.

These are thin fillets of deer but a big chunk like deer sirloin would work too.

Dear with Raspberry Wild Rice

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 400 gr deer fillets [1#] (or loin)
  
• 1 liter water [1 quart]
• 3 strips lemon peel (or use orange peel)
• 1 t black pepper, cracked (very coarsely ground. I used a mortar)
• 1 bay leaf
• salt
• 80 gr wild rice [3 oz]
• 120 gr white rice [4 oz/ ½ C]
  
• 150 gr fresh raspberries (or 100 gr frozen & 50 gram fresh) [8 oz]
• 2 T lemon juice (fresh) (or orange)
• 4 T olive oil, virgin
• salt
• pepper

Procedure

1. Water, cold,  into a pot (for the rice)
2. Add lemon/orange rind, bay leaf, pepper and a good dash of salt
   • Bring to a boil
3. Add wild rice
   • Simmer 30 minutes
   • Meanwhile, skip down to doing the dressing
4. Add white rice
   • Simmer 20 minutes (or 15 minutes - until rice is tender)
   • Meanwhile, skip down to doing the meat
5. Drain excess water through a sieve
6. Mix gently with a fork into the raspberry dressing (see the following)
7. Taste for salt and pepper.  It will probably need both
   
   

   Raspberry Dressing

8. Zip 100 grams of raspberry with a little blender until very liquidy
9. Strain through a sieve into a big bowl (for the rice, later)
10. Add lemon/orange juice and olive oil and whisk to emulsify the dressing
    

    Meat

11. Grill your deer fillets over high heat (or under high heat if you're using the oven grill, as I did) or fry the deer loins
12. Plate the meat and rice, decorate with whole raspberries (and, if you used orange zest/juice, with fine orange slices)

Done

Notes

1. Put salt into the rice water before the rice.  Adding it later does not have the same effect at all

Deer - Two Ways: Way 2: Cold: Ciervo

This is not as much a recipe as a technique. The meat is roasted exactly the same as the other day but presented differently.

Properly done deer is quite a treat cold. In this case it's just the deer and the raspberry sauce although I considered making it into a Deer Salad.

Procedure:

1. Roast the deer. Perhaps even less well done than before (max internal temp of 55C [130F]
2. Slice very thinly. Maybe a ½cm [¼"]. Thin is the trick to being able to enjoy bunch of the sauce with each slice. We need lots of surface area to coat with sauce.
   
• For a salad cut the roast in half horizontally first so you make thin, narrow slices; a size like duck breast.
  
3. Arrange on a plate
• For a salad put the meat on top - don't mix it in with the greens
4. Puddle the raspberry sauce next to the meat
• For a salad thin the raspberry sauce with red wine vinegar and virgin olive oil (equal parts of each of the 3) to make a raspberry dressing
  

Done

Really, this is a sort of "what to do with leftovers" post

Deer - Two Ways: Way One: Roasted: Ciervo

This is Oven Roasted Deer with Raspberry Sauce


(PDA camera {an iPaq by the way})

The deer is farm raised, sort of like cows are, but more open pasture style; it's sweet, tender and not "gamey" like one might anticipate if it was wild/forest hunted deer.

Using the raspberry sauce that I made the other day I quick roasted the thingy. This same procedure can be used on pretty much any thick chuck of tender meat.

Oven Roasted Deer with Raspberry Sauce

Time: 30 minutes total

Ingredients

• 400 gr ciervo [1# deer], in this case a sort of "loin"-like piece - long and roundish
  
• salt, kosher-type
  
• olive oil, to anti-stick the pans
• white wine, several splashes worth
  
• 125 ml raspberry sauce [4,5 oz]

Procedure

1. It's best if you get the meat out of the fridge an hour or two before cooking so that it can reach room temperature - it roasts more easily, more evenly, this way. If you can't, or forget, as I often do, and the meat is very cold, set the oven 10-15 degrees lower to roast slower.
   
2. Set oven to Hot, 195 C [380F]
   
3. Clean up the deer meat, removing any silver-skin, sinewy strips from the outside of the meat; cut off the straggly parts so that it's got a nice consistent shape
• Don't throw away any of the residual meat from doing this, save it for making the sauce
• You can do this hours or a day in advance
  
4. Salt the meat (no pepper today)
1. Wait a minute before cooking to allow the salt to absorb into the meat - or wait a hour or two - no problem
   
5. A little (very little) oil into a large, hot, frying pan and we sear the meat
• Not too too much oil; we're not deep frying this
  
• Deer meat is quite pink and does not "brown" the same as cow. We're out to develop a crust on the surface - which theoretically seals in the juices - and positively adds loads of flavour [flavor] due to some kind of caramelizing effect (the maillard reaction [in which, as we know, the reactive carbonyls of certain sugars interact with the nucleophilic amino groups of the products amino acids])
  
• Put the meat in the pan and don't move it. Let the heat do it's work. Avoid turning the meat around and around in the pan. Like the professionals - just leave it alone.
• Listen for a change in the sound of the frying after a minute - that's the moment when it's "seared"enough. Or, failing that, wait a minute and take a peek, lifting one end with a spatula
6. Once seared, transfer to an oiled roasting pan and stick it in the preheated oven
7. Add a generous splash of white wine to cover the bottom of the roasting pan very shallowly. Not too much because we aren't poaching the meat. Only enough to add humidity to the air in the oven and to keep the meat's juices from burning in the bottom of the pan
8. Back to the frying pan -hot - sauté the little meat bits left over from cleaning up the meat
• Deglaze a little, if needed, to avoid burning the remains of the searing process
  
9. Deglazing is the process of using a splash of white wine; make that two, to clean the pan
   
• Scape off the meat that's stuck to the bottom (there's a lot of flavour in there)
• Once cleaned up transfer this to a smaller frying/sauce pan. The one used for searing the meat is quite big and controlling the sauce-making process in a smaller pan is somewhat easier.
  
10. Add the raspberry sauce to this pan
• Reduce - bubbling away slowly while the deer is in the oven roasting
• You'll see "steam" rising from the pan; which is the water evaporating
• Later, the liquids from the roasting pan are going to go in here so you can let it get fairly thick
  
11. The "roast" is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 60 C [140F]
• Check it after 10 minutes of roasting
  
• Or poke it with your thumb to feel whether it seems "firm"and not squishy/raw
• In fact, for practice, test the temperature and poke it too so you learn what "medium rare" feels like
12. Set aside on a warm plate an put a tent of aluminum foil over it
13. Splash white wine into the roasting pan and deglaze
14. Pour this into the sauce
• Reduce - until it's sauce-like and coats the back of a spoon
15. Un-tent the meat, pour the residual juices (if any) into the sauce and slice the deer into 1 cm [½"] slices
• Arrange decoratively on a warm plate
  
16. Strain the sauce into a puddle next to the meat
• We prefer not to pour sauces over meat that's been cut; so that we don't hide the beauty of the interior of the meat. It's a Cordon Bleu thing.

Done

Notes

1. I notice now that I've included the notes in the stream of consciousness writing of the recipe's procedure. I won't re-edit this post to move it all to here.
   

I served this with a green salad and Cardo as the vegetable. Cardo is a sort of thistle. We eat the stem parts, not the thistle itself.

Looking at Red Deer: Ciervo

Today I'm looking for recipes to prepare some deer steaks. (apparently I'm on some kind of kick about meats other than, pigs, cows and chickens).


Photo: wikipedia: GNU Free Documentation License.

I know the family on The Island is bound to have lots of experience with this since some of them actually go out and hunt for their own food and/or get loads of venison from others who do. I seem to recall having some bear sausage last time I visited - and looking forward to trying some variants again when I'm over there in August.

I'm thinking of marinating them and then just frying 'em up and making some kind of fruit sauce to go with it.