I was in London on Saturday, knowing we had our good friends Ed & Roz from the middle of Nowhereshire around for supper on Sunday evening. I made a beeline for Borough Market near London Bridge Station with the intention of spending a morning looking for and buying some excellent (if slightly more expensive than usual) ingredients. Sadly, at Borough Market, your main activity is pushing past people who’ve stopped slap-bang in the middle of the world’s busiest gangways to take photographs of people fililng their faces slap-bang in the middle of the world’s busiest gangways.
Anyway, upon finding my intended meat-selling chap – don’t ask me his name, I just know where he is – I thought for a while about what to buy. Eventually – and it was eventually, having considered boar, rabbit and hare – I settled on venison shanks. I asked for four, got them weighed, and realised I only needed two. So I bought three.
Venison may sound like a bit of a luxury meat, and is down the pecking order in terms of popularity in the UK, but regarding cost, it’s not that much more than lamb. And I rather like eating lamb. A lot. I’d rather cook too much, knowing we can have leftovers – venison curry, venison vol-au-vents, venison sandwiches – for the next few days, than not enough. It wasn’t until I did my calculations later that I realised I’d bought about 5 1/2 pounds of venison shanks. Our freezer has conked out – so I was going to be cooking the lot.
We got home later on Saturday, and I contemplated what to do with the uncooked deer legs. Venison is a strong-flavoured, robust meat, It can cope with a strong sauce or marinade to cook in or accompany it. A not uncommon ingredient to accompany them is redcurrants; another method was cooking them in a simple red wine stock. The butcher suggested cooking it in port. This was a fine idea, though seeing as the only bottle of port we have is a decent Calem Colheita from 1990 (a gift from Daisy’s dad, and needs opening soon, really), I thought I’d have to think again. I settled on marinading the meat overnight in a concoction which was half-inspired by the butcher’s suggestion, and half made up on the hoof.
I took a 175ml glass of not-too-high quality red wine, and added a couple of capfuls of not-too-high quality brandy, two tablespoons of light soy sauce, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and a generous teaspoon of smoked paprika (Spice of the Gods). Salt and pepper aren’t really needed. Pierce the meat, and smother it generously with he marinade, and let them get to know each other in the fridge overnight.
Fast forward to Sunday morning, and I got the slow cooker out – a damn fine piece of kitchen machinery. Roughly chop an onion, smash a couple of cloves of garlic and place them in the pot. Take the shanks out of the marinade and, in a pan of hot butter, sear the outside to seal them. Place them in the slow cooker, pour the marinade in with a twig of rosemary (thyme will do) and cook on ‘high’ setting for about an hour or so, before changing to ‘slow’ settting for further eight hours. ‘Baste’ the meat in the sauce every couple of hours.
With two hours to go, I decanted a bottle of extremely fine 2007 Brunello di Montalcino, a noted favourite of Ed’s from the Tuscany wine region.
With an hour to go, I prepared roast potatoes, roast sweet potatoes and, just before serving, some green beans.
The only thing left to do after the shanks have been cooked is to carefully take them out – I say ‘carefully’ as the bone will fall away from the meat – and deposit the juice / sauce in a wide pan with some butter and flour and stir into a thicker gravy.
The decanted Brunello di Montalcino was duly served, and proved an excellent accompaniment to the strong flavours of the venison.
Footnote: Upon serving Roz (I hadn’t let them know what they were having until they got here), I discovered venison wasn’t exactly top of her list of favourite meats. I was very proud to be told after our vast repast that this had all consequently changed for the better.