GAME FOR MOST THINGS

 I asked the butcher in our local market if he had any rabbit for sale.  I assumed he hadn’t because there wasn’t any on display but I thought I was worth asking.

    “No,” he said, “the lads are all out deerstalking.”

I don’t believe I ever heard the word ‘deerstalking’ used in a sentence before, but at least this meant that the butcher had venison.  So I bought a haunch.  It looked like this:

 

ALL VENISON PICS BY CAROLINE GANNON

Now, I believe some people can taste a piece a venison and tell you the species and gender of the deer, but I’m not such a person.

 

 I’d never cooked a haunch of venison before but all the recipes suggest it’s not a tricky thing to do -  sear it, roast it with some veg, and Bob’s your relative.  What can go wrong?  Not much apparently.

 

And here’s the beauty part.  The haunch looked a bit big, and since there were only two of us eating it, we sliced off one end to keep for later.  Guess who’s having venison tartare at the weekend.

 

Incidentally the picture at the top of this post shows a few of the many deer that used to wander into my garden when I lived in Los Angeles.  I did wonder if I might hunt (or I suppose ‘deerstalk’) them but the law says it’s illegal to discharge a fire arm in your own garden.  I considered other methods – wrestling the beast to the ground and stabbing it to death with a knife being the main one, but I decided against it. I’m not a monster.  I’m not even a butcher.