Sincerity in food
Its been a long time since I murdered anything, but I still can’t see the bottom of the freezer. Two doe and a big hog last a long time for a family of three. Yesterday I thawed out what you might call a rump roast and braised it for four hours. It was good timing, my wife and daughter crave the iron right now. There is something satisfyingly masculine about preparing wild game for my ladies, like I’m doing my job. When I first started hunting, they were leery. Leery of the practice, of the time and expense, and of the meat itself, which smelled different. There was a great deal of trust involved in eating meat that touched nothing but butcher paper, the knife, and my hands since it scampered around under the mesquite. Then there was the prospect of dry aging, which seemed contrary to everything we thought about meat. Two years into the experiment, there is no need to persuade or advertise, the smell that fills the house gets them excited.
Its getting down to a lot of ground burger and soup bones, but I drew a rifle tag for San Angelo State Park in mid November, my first public draw hunt. I’m going to be zeroed in and ready. Hopefully there will be something for Thanksgiving.
Honest Recipe: Braised Venison Roast
Preheat oven to 290.
1. Thaw mysterious butcher paper from freezer in garage. Unwrap in the sink and see what your working with. Looks like a rump roast type thing.
2. Tidy up the meat, trim some silver skin/facia. Cover in course salt and cracked black pepper.
3. Bring a couple tablespoons of olive oil to smoke point in a cast iron dutch oven. Sear the bejesus out of that thing on all sides till your house is filled with oily smoke. Open windows and doors, even though its over 100 outside and run the fan to prevent everything from smelling like this forever. If you were your landlord you would take this out of your deposit.
4. Transfer roast to plate and saute onions, mushrooms, garlic, and whatever else is handy in the dutch oven. The char will scrub off with the mirepoix and create a good flavor base. Some of it will stay and you will have to work it out with elbow grease and a scrubby later on.
5. When the edges of the onions are clear, nestle the roast back into the mirepoix, dump in a can of roasted tomatoes and pour in about half a bottle of red table wine. That bottle you didn’t finish before it went sour will do fine. I had some roasted romas with green chilles from trader joes which added a little heat. The tomatoes and wine will contribute acid which will help break down the connective tissue in the haunch. You weren’t able to remove lot of silver skin because it was deep in the roast, containing muscle groups so they can contract independently. Fascia is really amazing. Did you know they recently declared it an independent organ? Its called “The Interstitium”.
6. Pop it in the oven at 290 because you would like to let it cook for eight hours on 190 but you only have four hours.
7. Call your wife at home from the car two hours later and ask her to lower the temp to 240, no, 230, because youre afraid it will get stringy.
8. After three hours, turn the roast over so the part that was up is now face down in the juice.
9. After Four hours, the house smells fantastic and everybody is a little frustrated they had to wait until eight oclock to eat, especially on a school night. You can pull the roast apart with forks. Its pretty much perfect. Serve over rice, or whatever.
Epilogue: Don’t forget to turn the oven off. Try and get someone else to clean up since you made the food, unless you are working off some other debt. I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got, but this sort of thing helps my credibility around the house.