For the meal on Monday I decided to buy in some venison. Yes, you know this is going to be good.

So, on to the shopping list. You will need:

• Venison – cut into chunks
• Shallots – about 8
• Turnip
• Carrots
• Potato – I bought some called apple fir
• Chicken or beef stock
• Red wine
• Balsamic vinegar

Add the venison to a mix of flour, thyme and black pepper. Stir it around.

Peel the shallots, cut the vegetables into one inch chunks and heat up some oil.

Brown the meat quickly and then reserve. Add the veg and shallots and cook for about ten minutes. Put the meat back in and then add the liquids. Balsamic, red wine (half a bottle) and stock. Scrape the bottom of you pan when you stir it all in. That gets all the lovely browned meat into the stew. Use around a pint of stock.

To this I then added some red hot, firecracker sausages. Made in Lancashire they are our answer to chorizo. I’m counting on the strong venison flavour to be able to withstand the heat.

And that’s it. In true stew style you just throw it all in and leave for about two and a half hours.

Warning: I am cooking and writing on a Sunday evening. The meal won’t be eaten until Monday. This post will be updated with photos and a postscript which will reveal whether or not it tasted good. Fingers and forks crossed.

And I’ll be serving the stew with some locally brewed raspberry wine from www.wilsonswinery.co.uk.

POSTSCRIPT

OK, so opinion was divided on this one. My wife loved it and I hated it. We both enjoyed the vegetables but I felt the meat was too strong, it needed another flavour to tone it down somehow. The veg was nice. The chorizo didn’t add anything at all to the dish but I’m going to have to read around if I’m to ever make a similar dish again. Next week I may stick to a simpler Lancashire Hotpot. Or I may fish around and find something just as belly-warming.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Rarely a day goes by when I don’t take a good look at this site. That and the excellent Food Pornographer’s. Daily Internet use for me is a scramble to read news, design blogs, game news and advertising journals. It’s not easy cramming all of this into an already overloaded day but even so, I do try to squeeze in a little food viewing. It’s one of the ways I relax each evening without resorting to the TV so neglecting that would be like quitting reading or hiking through the Lake District.

When it came to cooking this eye wateringly good dish, however, I couldn’t get it all and so had to improvise a little. Cauliflower was substituted for parnsips and I’m afraid I had to resort to plain old beef rather than venison. And what’s that about only TWO meatballs? Pah!

Despite my tinkering the meal was still a success and one that will be going into the scrap book for repeated cooking. I will get the venison in next time; although I hear it’s a little deer.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.