Slow Cooked Wild Venison Masala

So if you haven’t guessed already, I’m a super busy woman. I run the behind-the-scenes of my husband’s brick and block laying business, I’m a stay-at-home mum of a 2 year old boy (pregnant with another, due Christmas day, yeah yeah, laugh it up...), chase around after our two lively English Springer Spaniels allllllll day, have a part-time job, we own 22 acres which requires daily attention, all while trying to build my own empire with ‘Hunter &Wife Homeware’, ‘Hunter & Baby Babygear’ and ‘www.howtobeahunterswife.com’. And in between all of that, I keep the house in some kind of order!

So basically, rule number one when it comes to prepping and cooking dinner for the team is – Must be simple and versatile. That’s why the slow cooker is pretty much my best friend.

The following recipe is a goodie that’s super adaptable, use any red meat (works particularly well with goat), no biggie if you don’t have one of the spices, you can use cream or sour cream if you don’t have yogurt, use fresh tomatoes if you don’t have a can. Don’t be too fussy about quantities, except maybe the cayenne... unless you like it HOT!

Ingredients

 

500gm Cubed Venison

1 tsp Turmeric powder

1 tsp Garam Masala

1 tsp Coriander powder

1 tsp Cumin powder

1 tsp Fenugreek

1 tsp Cayenne Pepper

1 tsp Paprika

3 garlic cloves (or 3 tsp of minced garlic)

2 tsp minced ginger

1-2 cups plain yogurt

1 can diced tomatoes

1 diced white Onion

Oil

Method

Combine cubed meat with spices, garlic, ginger and 1 cup of yogurt and place covered in the fridge for as long as possible – anything from a couple of hours to overnight would do!

Preheat a good slug of oil in a large pan, add marinated meat and brown quickly. Transfer to warming slow cooker (or casserole dish with lid if going to cook in the oven).

Add diced onion to pan and sauté till softened. Add can of tomatoes, cook to combine. Use a wooden spoon to get all the yummy bits off the bottom of the pan.

Carefully pour over the browned meat and stir to combine. Meat should be just covered in liquid, if not, add a small amount of liquid beef stock.

Allow to cook on low for 6 hours +. If cooking in the oven, cook at 100 deg Celsius for 3 hours.

Add remaining yogurt before serving, on fluffy white rice.

Baked Spanish Meatballs

Baked Spanish Meatballs

This recipe is easily adapted to pretty much any mince or meat you like, just be sure to brown it first. You could also use chicken pieces (wings, drums, thighs, breasts) or rabbit pieces.

In this case I used rabbit mince, see rabbit burgers recipe for instructions for the mince.
This could also be made in a slow cooker.

Ingredients

Rabbit Mince

3-4 chorizo sticks, sliced about 1cm thick

olive oil

2 peppers, (red, yellow or green mix, not fussy!), chopped chunky

2 red onions, chopped chunky

8 cloves of garlic, peeled and halved

1 can of tomatoes, bash them up a bit with a fork

1 cup of chicken stock, make it in the can the tomatoes were in if you're using powdered

big handful of green or black olives, roughly chopped or whole (pitted ideally)

couple of tablespoons of capers, roughly chopped or whole

1 teaspoon of smoky paprika

1 teaspoon of turmeric

Method 

Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius.

Fry the sliced chorizo in a large non stick fry pan until browning and fragrant and set aside.

Form the mince into golf ball sized balls, roll in flour and brown in the same pan with a splash of olive oil. Place them into your roasting dish.

Return the chorizo to the fry pan and add the red onion, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, stock, capers, paprika & turmeric. Bring to the boil and pour over the meat balls.

Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes (check the meat is cooked).

Sprinkle with the olives and serve with rice, pasta, mashed spud or couscous!

'What's in the fridge' Venison Roast

Despite us having a new addition to the family, I've been insisting that the Hunter continue to have his 'man time' in the mountains. Not only is it vital to his mental health (and mine in a way!), but it keeps the freezer full! Unfortunately, I have less time to get creative in the way I used to, and instead have to get creative in a whole new way. A way in which I am bound by the ingredients that are in the fridge. Gone is the luxury of being able to whip in to town to grab some vital ingredient from the super market. Now I have to make do with what I have. Hence, 'What's in the fridge Venison Roast' was born!

Ingredients:
1x Lump of Venison meat (Pretty sure this was shoulder? Not really important)

Photo was taken before I added the stock, oops

1x small jar of basil pesto
Cranberry sauce
Minced garlic
Beef Stock
S & P

Method:
Sear the meat on all sides in a hot frying pan with a little olive oil to seal the meat.
Place in a roasting dish and baste with a sauce made with the pesto, cranberry sauce, minced garlic and S & P.
Pour approx 1 cup of beef stock into the dish, this will help keep the meat moist.
Cover in foil and roast for about an hour at 100 deg Celsius. Continue to baste in any leftover sauce and the juices throughout cooking.
Serve with creamy mashed spuds, or new potatoes and salad. I made a quick jus from the juices in the dish too.

This time and temperature is very approximate, it totally depends on the size of your piece of meat. I recommend using a meat thermometer if you have one. If you don't have one, pierce the meat with a thick skewer, if it the blood oozes out on it's own very quickly it may be too rare, if you have to apply pressure to the meat to get blood out it'll probably be about medium. We like ours medium/rare so cooked ours for about 30-45 minutes, and let it rest wrapped for about 15 minutes. This photo is kind of deceiving, it wasn't actually that bloody, I'd just poured some of the cranberry sauce jus over it.

The Day The Hunter Did Himself A Mischief!

Ruby

I remember it well because it was the weekend of my birthday, early August, a beautiful bluebird day, and I was spending the Saturday with a good friend of mine skiing at a local resort. We’d had the most incredible run of good weather, almost spring like. The snow was crisp on top and heavy underfoot.

From casually walking along the ridge, to slide city!

The hunter decided to take our wee Ruby (English Springer, 2 years old at the time) for a hunt up in the valley for goat or deer, whichever crossed his path first. Up the right hand side of the valley, which gets little sun, they walked and walked and walked, for what seemed like miles probably, with no sign of anything. Nice day for a walk luckily. As he was making his way quietly across the ridge line glassing over the other side for any animals having a lazy winter lunch in the sun, boots on snow, he felt his foot start to slip out, the crusty snow top had become ice... He quickly had his legs whipped out from underneath him, and had no chance of regaining his footing. He tried repeatedly to use his rifle as an ice pick, but the ice was too hard, and the slide too fast. Poor Ruby (ever loyal) had obediently followed along, despite the Hunter telling her to stay, she proceeded to slide down the hill at a million miles an hour just meters above him! It must have been quite a sight! They slid for a hundred meters or so, luckily (??) he saw a rose hip bush in his path and was able to bring his slide to an abrupt halt by throwing himself into it, ouch. Meanwhile, Ruby went flying over the top of him and slid a further 50 meters or so, her claws like little ice skates, providing her no grip whatsoever! She too, eventually came to a stop with the help of a thorny bush, although more by luck than choice! It took some serious coaxing to get her to come out of the bush, she was so shaken by her big slide!

Hunter and dog reunited after quite a scare, the hunter checked Ruby over for any injuries, and she got the all clear. He wasn’t quite so lucky… on inspection of his upper thigh he discovered he’d left a few layers of skin on the ice! His trusty stubbies had failed him. And although the bush had saved him from sliding further, it wasn't an entirely friendly shrub, the scratches across both legs were evidence of that. Queue graphic photo... I guess at the time it was numbed with the cold, the real extent of the injury wouldn’t make itself clear until later in the day… the post-hunt shower…

I called the hunter on my way home from my day in the snow to see if he wanted to catch up for a beer to compare stories of our days adventures, blissfully unaware of what he’d been up to, and was greeted with the words a hunter’s wife dreads; “Ruby and I did ourselves a wee mischief today out hunting…” 

Of course I fear the worst! Do we still have a wee Ruby? Vet Bills? Broken bones? Rolled the truck? What kind of mischief!? He filled me in on the basics, and I was somewhat relieved that it seemed no permanent damage was done to either dog or hunter.

When I got home, poor Ruby was still shaking on her beanbag (3 hours later!), eyes wide like her life had flashed before her! The hunter was only slightly better, whiskey and adrenaline are an amazing cocktail for pain relief and story telling it would seem. The wound was raw, but clean, right down to the meat. He was icing it, as much as he could handle, but it was incredibly painful.

In the days following, we tried a number of different dressings for the wound, unfortunately it was a bit of a trial and error. One error we made was to put a fabric dressing on it… which had to be removed in the shower because of course it stuck to the raw meat. I’ve never seen a man drop to his knees in such pain, I thought he was going to pass out… I was gently trying to remove it, slowly, slowly. But he insisted I rip it off like a band-aid… I ripped and ran! After that (and a fair bit of googling and consulting the pharmacist), we discovered the magic of ‘moist wound healing’. Although pretty gross, it definitely worked! Basically, when you have an raw open wound like that (like a burn), you cover it in a plastic shield (like a second skin bandage), allow the shield to fill with the wound’s healing fluids (yes pus and blood…) and VERY carefully change the shield daily, giving the wound a bit of time in between to get some air. It’s smelly and revolting (you can thank me later for not providing any photos of the dressing changes), but works and is much less painful than the alternative. It's also is less likely to leave a scar. It took about a week of the expensive second skins, but once over the worst of it, it healed extremely quickly.

You’re probably asking yourself, “why didn’t he just go to the doctor!?”, and yes I suggested that to him.  But we really didn’t think there was anything a doctor could do that we couldn’t. It didn't need stitches, we had antiseptic powder and the appropriate bandaging. We kept it clean, changed the dressing regularly, watched for any signs of infection, and a week later, happy days, it was well and truly looking a whole lot better. Lucky escape for both man and dog. And no, he didn’t shoot anything that day, but what an experience! And that my friends, is what we call, doing yourself a mischief!