Cutting, Cooking, & Recipes

With yesterdays deer all cut up I was looking at some tasty backstrap and decided to make an old favorite for this afternoons dinner: Englishg style Venison/mushroom pies and Horse radish cream

Here goes

PASTRY:

This is a simple and delectiable savory hot water pie pastry that is barely more diifficult to work with than play dough!

14-1/2 oz (400g) plain flour

170 grams water

4 oz butter

3 oz lard

1 teaspoon salt

Put the water lard and butter in a pan and heat till fats are melted. Stir together flour and salt, add water and melted fats and quickly stir together. This will come together very easy and looks a bit like play dough. Turn it out on the cupboord and press, mush. knead it a couple times just till it comes all together in a bowl - IT WILL BE HOT

When it comes together wrap the ball in plastic and let it cool at least 2 hours as it is too hard to deal with hot. Making ahead a day is just dandy!

Filling

1 LB of venison cut into roughly 1/2 inch cubes ( I used back strap but ANY cut will work fine if is trimmed well of fat and silver skin)

One medium onion halved and sliced thin

8 oz frech button mushrooms (Or any kind you like - morels are damn nice in this!) halved and sliced thin

one pint of beef stock

1 teaspoon of dry or fresh thyme

1 heaping teaspoon of rosemary

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon of Sweet Paprika

2 tablesppons of cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of water

Your favorite meat seasoning - I used Lawerys Black pepper season salt

a little flour

I season the diced meat pieces really well then toss them in a small amount of flour to coat

Heat a little oil or bullet in a medium sauce pan or smal dutch oven (You will need a lid)

brown the meat in the pan, when mostly browned ad the onions amd mushrooms and cook a few minutes more till they start to soften and color.

Add Thyme, rosemary, bay, and paprika (Now the season salt has garlic so I don't add any extra. But if your seasoning does not have any garlic componant I would add either one minced clove or 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder here)

Stir and cook a few seconds and add stock. Bring to a boil, covwer reduce heat and simmer 1-2 hours until meat is fork tender ( Use your judgement and personal taste on the texture of the meat here. Using fresh backstrap this was tender in 40 minutes)

Mix cornstarch and water and add to mixture - You want this VERY thick. It may take more or less slurry to get the right result.

Allow this mix to cool completly

When all is cool assemble the pies. My individual pie pans are 5" assemble like any pie make the bottom and press it tight into the bottomw of a greased tin. Fill to about level with cool meat mix which is probably pudding like cold whihc is good. Cut tops to fit pinch the lid and base together to seal - use an egg wash tp help the two seal shut. THere will be extra srust pieces and trimmings - You can make fancy leaves and frillies, I just tear into strips and pieces and add them to teh tap of the pies They taste fantastic i DONT NEED FANCY!)

Brush top of each pie with egg wash, makes them shiny and helps this to stay sealed

Cut a could vents in the top of each pie

Cook 40 minutes at 340 degrees - allow to cool about 15 minutes or so before removing from tins and greedily devouring

Horseradish cream is just sour cream whipped together with jarred horseradish to taste

The above egg washed with scrap dough rudely scattered about. The holey pizza tray is nice and makes sure the bottoms get brown

The end result waiting to reinforce my waistline

Bonnny appetity