The venison iconic French sauce
I rarely ate deer, red deer I
mean, just a few times as far as I could remember, for instance when my Mom
cooked it for Christmas, and I don’t remember having ever cooked it. In fact,
the red deer is relatively rare in France, because he needs vast wild
territories that France’s density of population and urban sprawl have
progressively reduced and limited to some areas in the East or Center of
France. His smaller “cousin”, the roe deer, is much more common, with a
population estimated at 1.5 million, vs. around 150,000 for the deer. When I
immigrated in the USA, I was indeed surprised to see all those beautiful deer
everywhere, in the properties, crossing the roads, drinking the water at our
pond… In this respect, I persistently keep a moving memory of a sumptuous male deer
standing still by the side of a busy road. I was driving my stepdaughter to her
school on an early fall morning when we saw a bunch of police or fire
department cars on the left of the road. A female deer was just hit by a car
and the cops tried, with some difficulties, to finish her off. Just a few
meters away from this scene, immobile, like a François Pompon’s bronze statue,
a beautiful male deer was looking at it and probably, excuse my
anthropomorphism, mourning his mate… Irreal. Ten years later, I still have
gooseflesh when thinking of it… Difficult to talk about cooking deer after this
memory!
A friend gave us a piece of a
young male deer that proves to be the top part of the rear leg, with its bone…
Which means that it could be cut in slices and seared like a steak. The iconic
sauce Grand Veneur would be ideal to accompany it. The Grand Veneur (literally, the Grand Huntsman – veneur
having the same etymology as venison) of France was the officer in charge of
the royal hunt, a very prestigious position then, since reporting directly to
the king and accompanying him during his favorite hobby, hunting the red deer! I
have found no explanation about how the sauce eponymous was called after the
Grand Veneur, but the link is quite obvious.
Practically speaking, the sauce
Grand Veneur is one of the several French sauce involving a red wine reduction,
sauce Chasseur, sauce Poivrade… and is probably considered as the top one. What
characterized the sauce Grand Veneur is the addition of a tart berry jelly jam
at the end, traditionally redcurrants, but cranberries, blackcurrants, elderberry
are very valuable options too. The sauce Grand Veneur also calls for heavy
cream or, optionally, butter. I chose the latter as I estimate that, first,
butter is a better binding agent and, second, it gives a brighter aspect than
crème fraîche.
I also chose to
marinate my deer steaks in red wine, flavored with chopped carrot, onion and
celery, and spiced with salt, crunched allspice and juniper berries, thyme, bay
leaves… Red wine marinade is generally used with tougher cuts of venison meat,
deer, wild boars… in the same way as it is used with the beef cheap cuts or the
rooster sturdy pieces, respectively in the boeuf bourguignon and the coq au
vin. In each case, the first objective of the marinade is to tenderize the meat
pieces. Which was unnecessary in the case of this tender young deer cut. But it
also contributes to mitigate the gamey taste of venison that is not appreciated
by everyone… I reassure the fan of gamey meat (my case), it is still there…This
is why in this recipe, I opted for a marinade… My wine choice goes for a
Bordeaux, but any medium of full bodied red wines will make the job: Cahors, Burgundy
such as Pommard or the likes…
Levels of
difficulty
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Cost
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Preparation
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Resting
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Cooking
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n
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$$$
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60 minutes
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120 minutes
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Ingredients 4 servings
§ Around 1.5/2 lbs. of tender deer cut (rear leg,
filet…)
§ 1/2 bottle of full bodied wine, or the necessary
quantity to cover the meat
§ 1 big or 2 medium carrots, chopped
§ 1 celery
stem, chopped
§ ½ cup of freshly chopped onion
§ 2 bay leaves
§ A few pinches of thyme
§ A dozen of crunched allspice berries (or the
equivalent grinded)
§ A dozen of crunched juniper berries (or the
equivalent grinded)
§ Approximately, a ¼ liter (or 1 cup) of veal or
beef brown sauce (personally, I make and reduce my own beef broth as I don’t
like commercial demi-glace, but this is obviously a quicker option)
§ 1 tbsp. of neutral oil for the sauce
§ 1 tbsp. of neutral oil for searing the meat
§ 2 tbsp. of butter (or of heavy cream) for binding the
sauce
§ 1 tbsp. of butter for searing the meat
§ 2 tbsp. of redcurrant jelly jam (or blackcurrant,
cranberry or elderberry)
§ S&P
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Instructions
§ Trim, bone, denervate and prepare the meat, in order to obtain clean
pieces of meat. Keep preciously the trims and bones in the fridge, at least a
full handful of those would be needed
§ Marinate the “clean” meat in the wine, with the carrots, the
onion, the celery, the herbs and spices, and keep it for a minimum two hours
in your fridge, lid or transparent film on
§ After those 2+ hours, take the “trimmed meat” and the “clean” meat
out of the fridge and let it drip on a grid, keep the dripping liquid and add
it to the base marinade, and put back the “clean” meat in the fridge
§ In a pot, heat the sauce oil over medium high burner, salt the
trimmed meat and sear it one side after another till they are all like
caramelized
§ Add the carrots, onion, celery from the marinade and let them
color in the hot oil, the pour the whole marinade, and complete it possibly
with some extra wine
§ Let the liquid boil for a couple of minutes in order to eliminate
the alcohol
§ Add the brown sauce and let cook till it starts to simmer, then put
on low burner and cover with a lid
§ Let simmer for around 90 minutes, checking regularly that the
sauce reduces, and adjust the burner accordingly
§ When you are ready to serve and when the sauce has taken a
coating texture, strain the sauce in a saucepan, pressing with a ladle or a
pestle to extract a maximum quantity of flavorful sauce
§ If you think your sauce has not reduced enough and you are in a
hurry, use either a little bit of arrow root powder, or flour or potato
starch, to thicken the sauce
§ Add the butter for the sauce and gently stir it till melted to “bind”
the sauce
§ Add the jam, and gently stir it to dilute it completely in the
sauce, and reserve the sauce in a warm spot
§ Take the deer steak that you will have taken out of the fridge
around 30 minutes earlier, and sear it in the pan like you would do with a normal
beef steak, in hot oil, around 1 minute on each side, then, out of the
burner, add the butter and baste the steak
§ Let the steak rest for 5 minutes on a grid
§ Serve the steak and side/coat it with the sauce
§ I serve it with roasted three color carrots, steamed purple
potato, and sunchoke purée.
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