Cooking With Frank: Venison Heart Ragout

A deer heart gifted from Dad,
before we cleaned it

To start this is a recipe utilizing venison heart, but can be substituted with beef heart. If meats of the offal family (organ meats) turn your stomach, retreat now...

Like the rest of the animal, venison (deer) heart tends on the strong side flavour; while not unpleasant to an adventurous palate, if you are trepidatious it's best to taste it for the first time with someone who likes  it, if only so someone eats it.

Venison heart is a muscle organ that is extremely lean, low in fat, high in B12 and iron.

'Ragout' is a French cooking term for slow cooked stew, and can include any number, and kinds, of vegetables and meat. While the meat of the heart cooks pretty quickly, the majority of "slow" cooking in this recipe we created is done with vegetables.

Note that this recipe is not a true ragout, hovering instead somewhere between a stew and a thick gravy.

STEP ONE: CLEANING THE HEART
Obviously you'll want to rinse the heart before you start working on it, to remove excess blood, hairs and any other debris. (If you purchase the heart from a supplies/butcher, it's likely been washed and cleaned).


(Thanks to our cook buddy, Ryan, for locating and sharing this great instructional video)

STEP TWO: THE INGREDIENTS
2-3 Tbsp Butter
2-3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 clove Garlic, minced
1/2 an Onion (medium-large sized), sliced
10 Button Mushrooms (medium-large sized), sliced
1/2 a large Venison Heart (or 1 medium), diced
5-6 Tbsp Flour
1/2-1 tsp Salt
1/2-1 tsp Pepper, fresh ground
1/4-1/3 c Water

STEP THREE: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Mince the garlic and thin sliced onions. In a pan on a burner over medium heat melt butter and add olive oil. (this where the dish becomes less healthy)
Sauté onions and garlic slowly until the onions are just turning brown.
Season flour with salt and pepper, and toss the diced heart in the flour mixture, shaking lose a bit of the excess flour.
Fry the heart until it just starting to get a medium brown "crust". (this should prevent the gravy from holding onto the floury taste)
Slowly add water to the mixture, a few tablespoons at a time, stirring slowly and continuously.
Continue adding water, keeping the pan over the heat, until the sauce (gravy) becomes a desired thickness.

STEP FOUR: SERVING IT

Notes:
Serving Recommendation: Over a bed of mashed potatoes and squash, which are great fall vegetables that naturally pair with venison meats, as fall is also the seasons for hunting most wild game.
Suggested Accompaniment: A personal variation of a fresh slaw, great for mellowing the richness of the dish: Add thin sliced plum tomato (center/seeds removed) with thin sliced orange/yellow peppers, and thinly sliced celery. Squeeze fresh lemon on top, season with salt and pepper and toss. It also adds a nice splash of colour.

ENJOY!

More food stuff from us...
Food & Cooking
2012

• Cooking With Frank: Green Tomato Chutney
• Zucchini Coming Out Our Ears
• Weekend Recap (Tomatoes)
• From River to Plate in Under Four Hours
• Cooking With Frank: A BBQ Dinner
• White Bread, For The Zombie Apocolypse
• Romancing The Sandwich 

2011

• Cooking With Frank
• Cooking Shepherds Pie With Us, Drunk
• Cooking With Frank, Ratatouille 
• Cooking With Frank: Zombies & Brains...Oh My
• Cooking With Frank: Venison Tenderloin
• The Enlightenment of an Englishmen: Part 1
  

Also...Frankie Skins a Deer (this year we'll be hanging it, making it easier on our back, and making gravity help us with some of the work)

Frank Skins A Deer

**We'll say it because, well...there are some people who will find this offensive...this is a real dead deer...there are scenes of blood...(no real good ones of course). If you are offended by the practices of hunting/the procedure of processing animals please do not watch the video, rather we suggest you read the entry from a couple of days ago: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/11/cooking-with-frank-venison-tenderloin.html...or anything else on this blog**

Yeah, so....we never did edit it (like we mentioned in the last few days of posts) - sometimes it's hard to keep on task and get anything done.

The audio was stripped away because The Mother was yapping in the background, and we were bitching about and/or saying stupid shit while lost in our own happy knife wielding world.

Why the outfit? Well, aside from the apron and the (duck) hunting "ski" mask, it's what we were wearing...together it looks ridiculous, we realize that. We also don't care. We hate doing laundry.

It was a small deer by any account, but wasn't exactly a (baby) Bambie
...and so, for fun, because *giggles* they said "Twitterpated"...

Yeah, we're sick, posting these two in the same blog entry.

We're okay with who we all are...and this is just some of us. Sick smart ass that we are today (often).
...and *gag* Disney...he was an evil evil man with many brilliant and mistreated people working beneath him.

~Frank et al 

A Random Friday Post

See...how random is that chicken wearing a Sombrero?

It's Friday...we (Frank) wrote this morning but didn't get done with the entry, hopefully it'll be finished by the end of the weekend; and apparently the video The Boyfriend is editing, of us skinning the deer, needs our "assistance"...but this picture was gleaned from it. It's not the greatest, we wanted an orange (real deer hunting colors) ski mask, but we got this duck hunting colored one instead.

Um....for sexier pics you can go here: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/p/pieces-of-frank-projects-in-photography.html - because...we know (the sexist part is the hunting knife in our hand).

Aside from writing we finished cutting up that deer (http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/11/skin-off-deers-back.html), having de-boned it last night, and finished cleaning it today, putting the jerky worthy slices to marinate until tomorrow (in a little soy sauce, fresh garlic, a LOT of Worcestershire, and some brown sugar)...we'll put it in the food dehydrator (The Mother has a big with over 20 strays, and a butcher-block top) in the morning, and within 24 hours we'll have venison jerky. Next week we'll grind the deer and make a different kind of jerky.

From one small female deer we netted about 3.5 gallons of venison stock, a 5 gallon pail of bits to grind, a 5 gallon pail of stew bits, two tenderloins which we immediately made for dinner on Wednesday (http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/11/cooking-with-frank-venison-tenderloin.html) and what else? That may be it.

Today we started the Google Map for our "#2012StabbingTour" (the adventure we wrote about at the beginning of Septemeber http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/09/our-new-adventure-decison-is-made.html)....details which will be added to the above page tabs titled 'Our 2012 Adventure Plans' http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/p/our-2012-adventure-plans.html (a new page addition to our blog).

So, there you have it. We accomplished a lot of nothing today, which is generally how it goes around here.

Happy Friday night, friends, family, readers, followers, and more....

~Frank et al

Cooking With Frank - Venison Tenderloin

Venison stock currently on the simmer

Here's what...we're exhausted.
Aside from errands today we cleaned half the deer (the one we wrote about yesterday), prepped bits for grinding, bits for stewing, started some venison stock with the ribs, with one front leg and shoulder blade of the doe - we didn't mention yesterday, but it was a "lady" (doe) deer - and we'll make more stock tomorrow, to put in the freezer for winter. We wanted to take a crack at some venison headcheese...but our deer arrived with no head.

Chunks of deer for grinding
and stewing

Tomorrow we have to take the hind quarters and finish prepping it for more grinding, more stewing AND some jerky (we LOVE jerky).

Also, from that pretty little deer came two delicate tenderloins (those are the big strips of meat that are each side of the spine)...





This is what we made with the tenderloins:

• Roasted Venison Tenderloin with a Brandy Sauce Reduction
• Mushroom Wild Rice Stuffing with Cranberries and Apricots
• Pan Seared Zucchini Batonettes
• Baked Butternut Squash

We used to own a catering company...which will be mentioned on some upcoming stories to finish off our history. One of the things our catering company focused on was seasonal and local foods. Why? Seasonal and local are by far the best tasting foods...it has nothing to do with the transportation/environmental impact of using local foods...often times buying local can mean more fuel costs, and equal environmental impact - but we can write more on that later. 

So why local and seasonal as a catering concept, or as an eating practice? Well...local means less manufacturing, purer food, possibly less chemicals, and it means seasonal...which is the best tasting fruits, vegetables and meats you will ever experience. Local and seasonal doesn't have to be some hippy, tree hugging crap...it can be purely selfish; why eat unless it tastes like the best thing you can put in your mouth?! So, our menu tonight was crammed with seasonal items: wild rice (technically) venison, squash, zucchini...all seasonal, all local...even dessert was seasonal tonight.

So, what to say? We don't have recipes for this...which means we have too much of the wild rice stuffing...and Angry Brother, who sent the deer over to us for "processing", which is the skinning, and cleaning of excess fat, and silverskin (white/silvery colored connective tissue attached to various pieces of meat that make it tougher to chew after being cooked), after he scored it at hunting camp this week (he didn't shoot it himself) will get a nice plate of leftovers brought to work tomorrow.

If you are ever wondering what to do with leftover stuffing (whether it be wild rice or bread stuffing), here's what we're going to do; tomorrow morning we'll add an egg to some of it, and some panko crumbs, and fry a little stuffing patty, and on the side, sunny side up eggs and maybe some yogurt. Waste not want, want not...it's all about the evolution of leftovers.why waste food when you can use it to be creative? 

Another example, from tonight:

"What can I do with these raisins? They're too damn dry to eat?", The Mother said, as she was digging through one of her cupboards...

Our suggestion was to soak them in brandy, then make a bread pudding out of them. Yum. Now I wish we'd made bread pudding for dessert tonight...

Dessert is about done now though. We won't post the picture here, we'll be posting it on Facebook (maybe), you know...where food pictures belong...

We made a brandy-caramel apple crumble with whipped topping..

Oh, and that video of us processing the deer from the start, that we mentioned in yesterday's post ( http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/11/skin-off-deers-back.html)? The Boyfriend, James, will have it done by tomorrow's post...where we'll do another entry about wild game. 'Tis the season.

~Frank et al