[Sca-cooks] Cooking venison

[Saint Phlip]

The thing you need to keep in mind that game meat tends to be very
dry, so any method of cooking you use should focus on adding extra fat
or liquid. Rather than just marinating and adding garlic, I'd lard or
bard it if I were going to slow cook it. Breading and frying would
tend to minimize the liquid too, giving you a rather tough piece of
meat- with any of the deer like game meats, to fry them, I'd cook them
plain in lard with just a hint of salt and pepper- very tasty that
way.

If you Google venison, elk, or antelope recipes, you'll get quite a
lot of hits, and if you look through the various recipes, you can get
a pretty good feel for what techniques and spices go best with each.
>From there, you can look at period recipes and see what you can find
that adheres to the priciples of cooking that particular beast. One
thing, however, to keep in mind, is that in period, game was often
killed by chasing the poor beasties over hill and dale, so when you
finally got your beast, he was exhausted and filled with stress
chemicals, thus, as a general rule, being tougher and stronger
flavored than a critter for whom death comes as a surprise, so you
might want to address the medieval recipes accordingly, if you're
starting with farm raised and slaughtered beasts.

Three quick tips:

If you get deer that have been feeding on a lot of apples, you'll
still have to minimize the amount of natural fat (it's pretty strongly
flavored), but it will be very tasty.

Go for does rather than bucks- milder flavored and less tough.

Juniper berries go very well with any of the meats you mention.

On 10/30/06, Georgia Foster <jo_foster81 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have been reading with interest the posts regarding wine marinade for
> venison.  In just a few short months, I will be preparing a feast for
> Candlemas that is developing for it's-self the moniker of "The MEAT Feast"
> There will be the standard three, beef, pork, and chicken, but there will
> also be Elk, Deer, and … courtesy of my modern-job boss, Antelope.
>
> Now, upon receiving this gift, I had intended to slice, dredge in seasoned
> flour and breadcrumbs, and then fry,
>
>
> Now this gets ol' Long John to wonderin … What sort of wine, or perhaps
> other marinade would be best suited to the preparation of the Antilocapra
> americana also called the Pronghorn Antelope.
>
> How might it be if I were to marinade, garlic stud and slow-roast the haunch
> whole???
>
> Ideas?
>
>
>
>
> Jo (Georgia L.) Foster
> jo_foster81 at hotmail.com


-- 
Saint Phlip

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Has anyone seen my temper?
I seem to have misplaced it at Stalag XXXV....