Doe or D’oh!? – Venison and Plum Stew

Not the sort of thing one expects to have delivered. Particularly as I’m not a butcher.

Question 1 “This early in the season, is this a piece of legally shot doe?”

Answer 1 “I’m told it is. The now infamous Wicklow Hunter tells me that they were out on a night shoot on the 31st October and ‘…just after midnight’ he downed a young doe. That brings it into the November season where that sort of thing is OK in Wicklow.”
In short: Doe.

Question 2 “What recipe are you going to use?”

Answer 2 (Here’s where the Homer like d’oh! could come into its own.) “I am going to try something totally original. I am going to cook Venison and Plum Stew.” Given that I had no real idea what to do with the venison, this was a brave outburst on my part. An outburst, fuelled by a glass or three of Rutherford Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon.
In short: D’oh!

The offending (though not at all offensive) Rutherford Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon

The next day, following the outburst, I had to put my thinking cap on. It was too late to go back. I could not retreat to defeat. I came up with the list of ingredients.

Here’s what you’ll need

• 1.5 kilos of venison (3 lbs)
• 3 large onions
• 1 litre of chicken stock (2 pints)
• Some seasoned flour
• A big sprig of rosemary
• 8 carrots
• Salt and black pepper
• A teaspoon of smoked paprika
• 14 plums (Yes! 14)
• 3 sweet potatoes (yams)

If you are lucky enough to get your venison delivered on the bone in a bin bag (trash sack), you will have to use untried butchery methods to transform it into a nice pile of lean meat.

I managed to do the gruesome bit and get a decent result.

If you are unlucky enough to get your venison from the supermarket in shrink wrapped PVC, you will never take a photo like this:

The gratuitous meat shot. Not that everybody wants to take photos of big clumps of raw meat.

Put the seasoned flour into a plastic bag, add the venison and shake it until the meat is coated on all sides. Do this while you get some oil heated in your favourite casserole dish.

The meat coated on all sides, ready to fry it off in the casserole. Good close up camera work!

Fry the meat in batches until brown on all sides. There will be a lot of nice brown residue stuck to the pot.

Starting to look tasty. Starting to smell very tasty too.

Remove the meat and add the chopped onions. They needed to be chopped into small pieces. Turn the heat down to very low and sweat the onions for 30 or 40 minutes. Add the stock, the meat, the various seasonings and the carrots.

The gratuitous carrot shot. Don’t ask, I don’t know why I put it in.

Put it in the oven at 200 C for two hours. Wash the plums. Take them outside into the fading natural light and take a picture of them.

I love the beautiful autumnal colours in the plums.

Now take them back indoors and cut them in half. Take an indoor photo of the plum halves.

The halves look nearly as nice as the uncut ones. Too nice to joke about.

Next peel and slice the sweet potatoes.

This is real life. A lot of peeling in these beauties.

Season them and put them in an oven tray.

The sweet potatoes ready to go in the oven. Use plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper.

With half an hour to go, put the sweet potatoes into the oven above the casserole. Add the plum halves to the casserole. Stir them in and wait for the 30 minutes. When you take it out it will look like this.

My venison and plum stew looked lovely. But would it taste OK? Too sweet? Would the meat be too tough? Damn my rash decisions.

Three generations of family were gathered around the table. The pressure was on. The Rutherford Ranch outburst was about to pay a dividend, good or bad?

It certainly looked OK. What about the taste?

The very good news is that the stew turned out better than I could have imagined. The flavours of the plums and venison worked incredibly well and the sweet potatoes added an extra dimension. I don’t often suggest it for my own recipes – TRY IT! I guarantee there will be no d’oh!.

I suppose there’s no need for a caption for this one?