Venison Knuckle Stew with a Pear Dessert

Firstly an apology for the version of "Different Drum" that's been in my head for the last 6 months being, in fact, by the Lemonheads when it should have been Linda Ronstadt. It won't happen again.


This was one of the things I made down south over the long weekend and kind of made itself up as I went along. The primary ingredient was some venison knuckles (shins? - do deer have knuckles) which they sell, and you may be more familiar with as, osso bucco. These were from Margaret River Venison. The vegetables, pears, and chestnuts were from an organic vege shop 5km south of Cowaramup. Not having an osso bucco recipe handy and being in wine country I decided to go with a simplified version of Boeuf Bourguignon. I later found a recipe but didn't feel like using tomatoes but did adopt the browning technique. It did work out very well, but if I've made some glaring errors please let me know. Here we go (note orthodox menu layout):

Meat

12 Venison Knuckles; 1/2 Bottle of Red; Sprig of Rosemary; 1 Leek - white finely sliced; 2 Bay Leaves; Bunch of Parsely; 2 dozen button mushrooms

1. Put everything except the mushrooms in a bowl and leave to sit for two hours.
2. Remove the knuckle and pat dry. Lightly dust with flour in a bag and then lightly brown in pot in olive oil. Remove
3. Pour the marinade into the pot and bring to the boil. Add the knuckles and add enough water to cover the meat.
4. Keep simmering over as low as heat possible covered. Mourn for the fact you didn't bring your heat diffuser along. Find out the burner switch goes both ways. Wonder why.
5. After one hour of this add the button mushrooms, decide to move pot to oven at about 16oC and leave to cook for another hour and a half.
6. Remove pot from oven, remove knuckle and keep warm, attempt to reduce cooking fluid further but decide waste of time. Innovative solution for the excess some later by placing a large slice of bread on everybody's plate after they've finished and soaking it with the juices.

Vegetables
1 sweet potato; 2 beetroots; 1 tube shaped pumpkin; EVOO

Dice the beetroot and the sweet potato into fingernail sized cubes. Slice the pumpkin into rounds (it was a long, round, and stripey pumpkin of an unknown name) and clean out the seeds. Cover the bottom of an oven pan with EVOO, put it in an 180C oven until heated, add all the vegetables, stir to coat and return to the oven until cooked, stirring occasionally. Should be around 30 minutes. Place a pumpkin round on the plate, fill with bits of beetroot and sweet potato scatter a few more fetchingly around the plate.

Dessert
4 pears; one vanilla pod; half an orange's peel; a vanilla pod; 300ml of double cream; unsalted butter; white sugar; a dozen chestnuts

My dream of gourmet special foodie moment artifice failed miserably. Nicole and Toni would peel the oven roasted chestnuts at the table as the smells of dinner filled the room with anticipation. As they chatted their lives would be forever linked with the memories of this time together and the part they had in the meal that would come. The reality was they complained after five minutes at the slowness of the whole things and continued to do until finished. Lahlahlah oh hello Uma, you'd like me to drive you to pick up some Belgian Beer in your AudiRS6 station wagon, sure, Hey! that's that leather outfit from the Avengers, now I thought it was OK don't know why people hated it so much I mean compared to Shakespeare in Love pffffffft and it had Eddie Izzard as a thug, Sean Connery was crap though but then again he usually is. Oh yeah anyway. Peel and halve pears, scooping out seeds, place in an ovenproof dish, insides up. Place some generous chunks of butter on top, sprinkle with sugar, add the orange peel and a vanilla pod and roast at 180C, basting regularly until cooked. Add the halved and quartered chestnuts after 15 minutes. Should take about 40 minutes, actually I can't remember. Less than an hour surely. Remove the pears, pour in some double cream and stir and heat through for five minutes. Pour over pears in an artful fashion.

Yes well it was very nice. The meat just flaked off the bones and then I noisily sucked the marrow from them while Toni covered her ears in horror. I would strongly recommend you make these with shins, shanks, or knuckles, even if you skip the whole marinade part. The veges were also very good and roasted beetroot must be given a go. The dessert, well yes, good too. The chestnuts were there amiably rather being a dramatic counterpoint. A success.