"sarah" wrote in message
. ..
EastneyEnder wrote:

My lovely butchers sold me (wish I could say it was on pain of torture
but
it wasn't)... about 1.5 pounds of diced stewing venison today. Not
something
they often have on offer, especially not at £1.99 GPB /pound.

Especially not when one of the butchers winks at you & calls you "sexpot"
or
"darlin"... all part of my daily shopping experience & I wouldn't change
it
for the world, even in these PC-benighted days. Specially as they don't
do
stuff in kilos thank god.

I was going to fling it (the venison!!!) in a pot and make a casserole /
daube/ whatever but thought it deserved better as it's not daily fare
here
in "Olde Portsmouthe".

I'm sure you all have some ideas, but how can I winkle them out of you?

*in her bestest Carry On voice* tee hee

In the past I've cooked venison stew in red wine plus appropriate herbs,
flavoured to taste near the end of cooking with port and/or raspberry
jam and/or blackberry vinegar. Very nice, especially if made with a good
red (none of this 'cooking' wine; if you can't drink it, don't cook with
it! The most recent muntjac seemed likely to be a bit more delicate (I
hung it myself, so had some control); Some of that ended up in a stew
starting by browning onions with homemade salt pork (flavoured with
juniper and pepper), added thyme and a bay leaf. I don't think I added
any red wine, but the end result was a rich and delicious gravy strongly
flavoured with thyme. Lovely with dumplings.

Incidentally, I've always ended up spending ages picking deer hair out
of the packed venison stewing cuts; I don't know how so much gets in
there, but it's not nice and soft and relatively un-noticeable like cat
hair :-))

I knew that you love cats but you eat 'em too?:-)
Graham