Saddle of hare.

I am at the moment trying to reduce the quantity of food in the freezers, I have still quite a bit of small game from the season before last (pigeons and hares in the main) so with this in mind I went down to my chest freezer to see what I could find for Sunday dinner. I came up (it is in the cellar) with two saddles of hare.

I decided it would be slow cooked hare (this would mean I could watch the Scotland-France 6 Nations Rugby match), I prepared it in the morning and put it one at 12:00 this meant we could eat at 17:00, perfect timing.

The following will make enough for two meals or 4 portions.

You shall require:

2 dressed hare saddles

For the marinade:

1 heaped tsp of game spices

10ml of white wine vinegar

10ml of red wine

Salt and pepper

For the cooking liquor and sauce:

50g of leek sliced into rings

40g of Celeriac diced quite small

50g of carrots sliced

10g of parsley root and stalks

10g of garlic crushed (about 3 good sized cloves)

50g of small diced katenschinken (local smoked ham)

1 medium onion

250ml of game stock

250ml of red wine

2 bay leaves

5 sage leaves (or half a tsp of dried sage)

Aromatics:

10 juniper berries

10 pimento berries

A few pieces of mace

1 cardamom pod

3 cloves

Pound all the above aromatics with a pestle and mortar (they don’t have to be too fine) 

1 heaped tsp of cepe powder

Procedure:

With a very sharp knife remove the silver skin, from the saddles. 

Rub with the game spices, give a good grind of salt and pepper.

Place head to tail and wrap in the muslin cloth, pour over the marinade and set aside to marinate for at least 3 hours (overnight in the fridge is better).

In the meantime dice your and slice your veg, and do any other prep that requires doing and make your Schupfnudeln if required (I bought mine already to go), I was also doing Cepes and as these were deep frozen, they required defrosting.

Layer the base of the crockpot (slow cooker insert) with the root vegetables, add the crushed aromatic spices.

Mix the wine and stock and add to the vegetables etc. and add the Cepe powder.

Remove the saddles from the muslin, pat dry and brown over a high heat. 

Sit on top of the rest of the ingredients in the crock pot, turn to high and lid on. 

Reduce to low after 2 hours and allow to cook until required.

I removed the hare and kept warm in the oven while I puréed the sauce ( a thick sauce, if you want it either thinner add more stock, or smoother pass through a sieve) I left it as it was.

 We served it with the Schupfnudel, sautéed with shallots and speck. I also like chicory so I had braised this in some of the game stock, about an hour at 15°C.

We had some nice steamed cauliflower as the main veg. Very, very nice and Scotland won as well.

An Autumn Game Pie

First get yourself a nice bit of game, this is a perfect  use for any game that has been too damaged to be roasted or braised whole (in this case it was all in order but was from last year’s shoots so needed using up as my deep-freeze is full)

2 pigeons

2 hare rear legs

A nice piece of wildsau (female boar) shoulder (about 1 kg bone in, it should give you about 500g of pure meat)

2 carrots

¼ of a celeriac globe (peeled and diced)

1 large leek (or 2 small ones)

½ a large onion (the other half is used for the stock)

1 tsp. of game spices

2 glasses of red wine (you will need some for the marinade and some for the sauce)

10 brown mushrooms, cleaned and halved (larger ones quartered)

Salt and pepper to taste

100 ml of vegetable oil

12 Sausage stuffing balls made from 200g of sausage meat and chopped herbs (parsley, thyme and rosemary), browned in a little oil before adding to the pie dish.

To start off, pick over the game, removing any shot, broken bone or feather stubble. Remove the breasts from the pigeons, the meat from the legs of the hare (trim away as much of the silver skin as possible) and the  dice shoulder of the wild sau.

Dice the meat into bite size pieces, place into a bowl and sprinkle with the game spices and a glass of good red wine, cover, and place in the fridge until required (at least 4 hours).

Now make your stock.

STOCK

Bones and trimmings from the game

3 bay leaves

3 juniper berries

3 pimento berries

A few parsley stalks

6 cloves

1 fat garlic clove crushed and chopped

½ tsp of coriander seeds

½ tsp mace

1-10cm piece of cinnamon bark

1 half of a squeezed lemon (Linda had made a very nice Turkish Hummus to go with her stuffed Aubergines the evening before)

2 ltr of vegetable (game or chicken) stock

5 tbsp.  of vegetable oil (Rape seed will do, Aldi have it on special offer at the moment)

Place the bones and trimmings into a large stock pan (this part can be done in a pressure cooker if you wish) along with ½ of the diced root vegetables and all of the rest of the stock ingredients, brown on a high heat, then cover with 2 ltr of made up vegetable stock (I always use Marigold, but any will do). Bring to a rolling boil and skim. Lid on but a slightly open (you can put a wooden spoon under it) and allow to simmer for a good two hours (30 mins if using a pressure cooker).

The Vegetables and Aromatics

Brown the veg, bones and carcasses

Add the stock

Bring to a rolling boil

Skim the scum as it rises

PIE FILLING

Keep the stock hot.

In a large pan, heat  the oil, put in the rest of the diced vegetables, the onion, garlic and then the diced game, brown and add enough of the game stock to cover the meat, lower the heat and simmer until the meat is tender, add the marinade and the mushrooms.

While all this has been going on make your Rough Puff Pastry for the pie crust.

225g of plain flour

¼ tsp of salt (often called a pinch)

150g of ice cold fat, I used 50% butter, 50% margarine diced quite small

A couple of table spoons of ice cold water (you may not need it all)

Sieve the flour into a large basin, add the salt and then stir in the fats with a knife (before adding the water you should still see small flecks of margarine and butter. Add the water a little at a time to form a stiff dough.

Roll out on a floured board into an oblong about 30cm x 15 cm, fold into three onto itself (1/3 in towards the middle and then the other 1/3 over the top, turn it so that one of the open ends is towards you roll out again and then repeat the procedure, Roll out to an oblong fold, turn and roll for a total of 3 more times. Cover in cling film and allow to rest in a cool place (fridge) until required (at least 20 minutes).

Assembling the pie.

Fry the sausage meat balls.

Put a pie funnel into a pie dish.

Place your stuffing balls in the base of a the pie dish.

Remove the meat and vegetables from the pan with a slotted spoon (in this case a one with holes in, but it served the same purpose) and add to the stuffing balls in the pie dish. 

Now make your sauce.

Add a glass of red wine and the brandy to the sauce and add some knobs of Beurre Marnier allow to cook out and thicken, pour this over the meat in the pie dish. 

Allow to cool, but in the meantime (we cannot have you doing nothing) roll out your pastry large enough to cover the pie, cut a strip (or two) off but make sure that the pastry is large enough to still cover the pie. Cover with cling film.

When the pie filling is cool, wet the rim of the pie dish with a little water and push the strips around and on top of the pie dish edge (this is to form a seal for the top. Now cover the pie with the pastry lid, pushing it down onto the edges, cut a small hole in the middle for the pie funnel to pop through. (I used to have a nice black bird one but it had an unfortunate mishap and broke its neck, this one is a much sturdier piece of cooking equipment that I picked it up for next to nowt at Newcastle Granger Market).

Decorate the top with roses and leaves and things (I would have cut out pigeons and hares but I am useless at doing that). Beat and egg and egg wash the top.

Heat the oven to 230°c,  put the pie in and bake for about 20 minutes until golden, reduce the heat to 180°C for a further 25 minutes, Pie done!

I had made Pommes Boulangère (this was in the oven before and while the pie was cooking)

1 kg of waxy potatoes

3 large shallots

1 clove of garlic (chopped)

A small amount of chopped fresh herbs

Fresh ground pepper

200 ml of stock

25 g of butter

Butter a baking dish, slice the potatoes quite thin (I used a mandolin) into a layer covering the base of the dish, cover these with shallots, a few slithers of garlic and a sprinkling of herbs. 

Wet with a little stock a grinding of pepper and dot with butter, continue with another layer repeating the procedure, and lastly finish off with a layer of potatoes, pour over the remaining stock, add the last of the butter flocks and a final twist or two of pepper. Place this in the oven covered at 180° and bake for 1 hr removing the cover for the last 10 minutes (I take it off and place under the grill).

We also had shredded Savoy cabbage with loads of butter and nutmeg.

Also garden peas, broad beans, butter beans mixed together with sautéed onions and diced speck (bacon pieces).

We had a nice glass of deep red Portuguese Ermalinda to accompany the meal (the same wine that I used for the marinade and the sauce.

Red Deer Fillet Strogonov

Red Deer Stroganov

On one of the cookery boards, of which I am a member, there had been a discussion about the ins and outs of making a Beef Strogonov, I decided that making it with red deer fillet would be another step up in opulence, I thought that as the one served in a lot of top class restaurants bears no resemblance to the original Russian dish, then I was quite at liberty to adjust mine. I tried to keep as near as possible to my dear friend Ian's recipe, but did tweak it a little. 

The original recipe published in Elena Molokhovets Russian cook book back in 1871 contained only cubes of beef sautéed and served in a sauce made from mustard and bullion  finished with a small amount of soured cream, it contained neither mushrooms nor onions.

So here is my version.

Ingredients.
  

First get yourself a deer preferably red as it will have a decent sized fillet, well 2 actually. This one was a good 750g after preparation. I removed the silver skin and cut off the fillet head (the thick part that sits at the top side of the long fillet).

As I said above I used my friend’s recipe and he had borrowed it from an original recipe. I did make a few changes, as the original used beef fillet (well what else would you expect in a beef stroganov?).

The making of the stroganov is actually very quick, the longest part is preparing the fillet and sautéing the onions and mushrooms.

750g of trimmed red deer fillet (from the thin end) sliced into rounds approx. 6-10mm thick then cut into lengths. 

1½ tsp. of mustard powder

1½ tsp. caster sugar

1 pinch of Marigold stock powder

200g of brown cap mushrooms

150g of ceps

150 g of chanterelles

4 medium onions (peeled)

450ml of crème fraiche

Salt and pepper to taste

200ml of vegetable oil

Make the mustard powder, sugar and Marigold powder to a paste with a little warm water and allow it to stand for about 15 minutes prior to use.

Slice the onions very thinly, clean the mushrooms, these were fresh so still had some soil, leaves and grass, so use a stiff small brush, then cut out any soft and wormy parts. Slice them to thinnish pieces. Pour half of the oil into a hot heavy bottomed frying pan add the onions and the mushrooms, reduce the heat and sauté (cover and reduce the heat to very low) for 20 minutes about ½ way through add the crème fraiche to the onions and mushrooms, add the mustard paste and stir in, cover for a further 10 minutes.

In a second frying pan heat the remainder of the of the oil, smoking hot, add half the fillets strips, quickly  brown all around, remove and place in the onion, mushroom melange, repeat with the rest of the fillet strips again adding to the sauce. Stir in and adjust seasoning, this needed just a couple of turns of cracked black pepper. 

Serve at once in a pre-heated terrine; we ate it with savoy cabbage and gnocchi.

Very, very tasty and well worth the small amount of effort, a perfect dinner party dish.