[Cooking] Venison with Chocolate Glaze

[karohemd]

This evening's dinner was mostly provided by friends. One had given me a slice off a leg of venison and two others had given me a cooking condiment collection from Hotel Chocolat which contained a savoury chocolate glaze.

Based on the structure of the meat, I cut the slice of leg into smaller portions, coated them in olive oil and seared the rather thin slices in a very hot pan, basted them with foaming butter towards the end, seasoned and set them on the side to rest. Then I deglazed the pan with red wine, seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme and added two spoons of the glaze mix to melt that in.

The meat was served on crushed baby potatoes, drizzled with the red wine/chocolate glaze, with creamed savoy cabbage on the side. A bit of an odd combination, I admit, but it's what I had on hand, I wasn't to go out and buy a head of red cabbage for one portion.
You can see in the photo how gooey that glaze was. Given more time (I was very hungry and just wanted to eat), you can turn this into something awesome. Also, it's probably rather easy to make yourself by just mixing grated dark chocolate with spices.

Comments

[cabd.livejournal.com]

I've seen venison from muntjack deer in some butchers lately. If you get the chance of a leg of muntjack, don't miss out. Wonderful meat; you can roast it fast, rest it and serve it pink and its succulent and tasty (I did that with garlic and rosemary studded in to the meat recently). Or you can cook it long and slow (say, a game stew with a brace of pheasant and the leg of muntjack, plenty of wine, caramelised stock vegetables, some stock, and herbs). Its a stunning cut of meat, comfortably my favourite kind of venison.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I'll have to have a look, thanks! Have heard good things about muntjack.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Looks delish! Glad it went down well, I've got some slices for myself tonight, but not doing anything fancy with them!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

That wasn't fancy! It took 20 minutes.
I had to cook it last night as I'm going to gigs tonight and Friday night and Andy's do on Saturday so the timing was spot on. :)