Last year I bought some venison from the farmer’s markets at the Powerhouse and J used it to make this recipe. Nearly a year passed before I came across some venison at SuperButcher the other day, and I knew I had to try to recreate it. This time it was my turn to slave in the kitchen over the recipe.
The recipe is from Gordon Ramsey and produces a beautiful thick, tender stew. The recipe can be found here.
A word of warning – this is a Sunday dish, a labour of love. Nothing too hard is involved but it requires a fair bit of cooking time and has quite a few steps. However, I think it’s worth it.
Flaky pastry, chicken and leek filling rich with the aroma of thyme and some fresh green beans for the side. Sounds like a great winter night to me!
I made this dish (adapted from the Donna Hay Winter 2011 issue) when we had guests over for dinner (Hi S and D!). The reviews were positive and there were even leftovers for my lunch!
Details
30-40 min
40 min
1 h, 10 min
Ingredients
- 2 cups Plain flour
- 1 cup FInely grated parmesan
- 150 grams cold butter, chopped
- 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon cold milk
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 6 chicken thigh fillets, chopped (about 900g)
- 40 grams butter
- 2 small leeks, sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 tablespoons thyme leaves
- 1/4 cup plain flour
- 2 cups milk
- sea salt and pepper
- Egg or milk wash
Directions
- Prepare your shortcrust parmesan pastry. The recipe says to prepare twice this much, but I'm sure I only did one quantity and it was sufficient.
- Place the 2 cups fo flour, cheese, 150g of butter and salt into a food processor and process for 1-2 minutes until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Add the egg and milk and process for another 2 minutes until a smooth dough forms.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 180*.
- In a large frying pan heat the olive oil over a medium heat.
- Cook the chicken in batches until golden and cooked through.
- Remove from the pan and set aside, keeping warm.
- Turn the heat down slightly.
- Add the butter, leeks, garlic and thyme to the pan and cook for around 7-8 minutes or until softened.
- Add the flour and cook out the flour taste for about 2 minutes.
- Then add the milk, salt and pepper and cook for another 3 minutes, stirring, until thickened and no lumps.
- Return the chicken to the pan and refrigerate until completely cool.
- Try to avoid dunking bread into the mixture while it is cooling on the bench. Fail but enjoy the delicious taste of failure.
- Take your pastry out of the fridge and split in half.
- Lightly grease your 31cm pie tin (cooking spray works fine).
- Roll half of the pastry out between 2 sheets of non-stick baking paper (this makes it much easier to line the tin). Your want your pastry to be around 3mm thick.
- Line your pie tin with the pastry and push into edges.
- Fill with the cold chicken mixture.
- Roll the remaining pastry out between the sheets of baking paper to 3mm thick.
- Place on top of the pie and trim any excess pastry. Use excess pastry to make crispy decorations on top of the pie (optional).
- Brush with an egg or milk wash and bake for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is flaky and golden.
It’s still felt like winter the last few weeks in Brisbane (lots of rain and wind), so here’s one last winter warmer dish.
This is easy and simple, and is taken from the book “The CSIRO Heart Healthy Program”. I know the CSIRO diet was very popular a few years ago, and despite its detractors I think most of the recipes are delicious.
We also made dumplings to throw on top for the last 30 minutes of cooking. Dumplings are simply made by rubbing flour, a pinch of salt and butter together and then adding water until you have a reasonably firm dough. You can also add herbs to taste – we added rosemary to these ones. Roll them into little balls and place on top of the cooking stew.
Details
30 min
120 min
2 h, 30 min
Ingredients
- 400 grams Beef, in 4cm cubes
- 1 tablespoon Plain flour
- 2 tablespoons Oil
- 2 Brown onions, diced
- 2 Carrots, thickly sliced
- 2 Sticks celery, sliced
- 440 mL can Guiness
- 2 cups Beef stock
- 2 tablespoons Tomato paste
- 1 Bay leaf
- 1 sprig Rosemary
- 1 sprig Thyme
- 200 grams Small button mushrooms
- 600 grams Chat potatoes, halved
- 1/4 cup Roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Directions
- Place flour in a bowl and season with pepper, then toss the beef through the flour.
- Heat 1 tbs of the oil in a heavy dutch oven over medium heat.
- Add the beef and cook in batches. About 3 minutes or until browned. Remove and set aside. You'll probably end up with flour stuck to the bottom of the pan - this is the flavour!
- Add the remaining oil to the casserole dish and cook the onion, carrot and celery for 5 minutes until they begin to soften.
- Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.
- Add the beef, Guinness, stock, bay leaf, rosemary and thyme.
- Bring tot he boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered for 1.5 hrs, stirring occasionally. Add the dumplings if making in the last 30 minutes.
- Add mushrooms and potatoes, then simmer, uncovered, for 10-15 more minutes.
- To serve stir in the parsley and serve with green veges.
This is a Jamie Oliver recipe that we made one Saturday night. It’s definitely a weekend dish as it requires quite a bit of preparation and cooking time.
Rabbit is not a meat I have eaten very often. As with most other meats, there is a considerable difference between the farmed variety and wild rabbit. In a funny coincidence, we actually went to J’s parent’s for dinner the following night and ate rabbit there! We’re pretty sure that we used wild rabbit in this dish, but J’s family used farmed. The difference in taste was quite marked – the wild rabbit was far more gamey, whereas the farmed rabbit was very similar in taste to chicken. It pains me to admit this, given I’m so opposed to factory farming, however I far preferred the taste of the farmed rabbit. It may also have been the recipe that we use (which is reproduced below). For some reason, all I could taste was nutmeg, and I felt it clashed with the strong gamey flavour of the meat. For this reason, I’ve listed it as optional. It’s worth noting that J really enjoyed the dish, even with the nutmeg, so that says something about different tastes.
I also think this dish would work quite well with chicken, if you aren’t quite able to face up to rabbit.
Details
20 min
90 min
1 h, 50 min
Ingredients
- 400 grams Self raising flour
- 200 grams Butter
- bunch Fresh tarragon, finely chopped
- Sea salt and black pepper
- Milk
- Nutmeg (optional)
- 2 RAbbits, jointed and cut into 10 pieces each
- Flour
- Olive oil
- Butter
- 10 Rashers bacon, finely sliced
- 2 Sprigs fresh rosemary
- 250 grams Mushrooms, chopped in half
- handful Baby onions (or 1 whole onion roughly quartered)
- 2 Cans stout
- 850 mls Chicken stock
Directions
- Preheat oven to 190*.
- Make dumplings by rubbing together flour, butter and tarragon. Add salt and pepper, then use a fork to mix through enough milk to get an unsticky dough.
- Bring together until quite stiff.
- Flour your hands and knead into a dough.
- Roll the dough into little balls (about 18 in total). If using the nutmeg, sprinkle over the balls.
- Refrigerate balls until ready to use.
- Now take out your rabbit pieces and coat with flour. Shake off any excess.
- Heat a splash of olive oil and about a tablespoon of butter in a deep dutch oven.
- Add the rabbit pieces in batches, cooking until golden on all sides. Remove and do the next batch.
- Once you have browned all the rabbit, return the pieces to the pot and add salt, pepper and bacon.
- Cook for a couple of minutes to make the bacon crispy. Ensure you keep the rabbit moving so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Add rosemary, mushrooms and onions and continue frying another 10 minutes until the vegetables have softened.
- Mix in 1 tbs of flour, pour in the stout and chicken stock.
- Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Put your dumplings on top of stew with about 1cm between them.
- Drizzle with a little olive oil and put the pot into the preheated oven. You don't need to cover the pot.
- Bake for 45 minutes.
This one is truly delicious and a great winter dish. We’ve made it once before with rosemary lamb sausages and a stronger beef stock and I found it a bit overpowering. I think this version is a good balance of flavours. If you’re not a sausage fan, the lentils on their own are delicious. If you’re vegetarian, you could omit the bacon and perhaps add carrot or celery to give the lentils added depth.
I am a huge fan of puy lentils (and lentils generally). I’m trying to become more adventurous and experiment more with different grains, seeds, beans and lentils. I added chopped kale while the lentils were cooking, and topped with cherry tomatoes at the end. You could try broccoli, spinach or silverbeet in place of the kale. Although there are tomatoes cooked into the lentils, I think the cherry tomatoes added a nice sweetness and lightness to an otherwise very hearty dish.
Unfortunately I can’t credit the original version of this receipe – J transcribed it into a notebook some time ago and didn’t make a note of where he took it from.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp Olive oil
- 8 Beef sausages
- 1 large Brown onion, diced
- 4 Bacon rashers, chopped
- 2 cloves Garlic, crushed
- 2 cups Dried puy (green) lentils, rinsed
- 2 Bay leaves
- 3 cups Stock (I used beef)
- 4 Tomatoes, chopped
- 1/2 cup Parsley, chopped
- bunch Kale, chopped
- handful Cherry tomatoes, halved
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 180*.
- In a large dutch oven or casserole dish (that you can use on the stove) heat the oil over a medium-high heat.
- Cook the sausages, turning, for 5 minutes until browned all over. Remove from the casserole dish and set aside.
- Add the onion, bacon and garlic to the casserole dish.
- Cook over medium-high for 5 minutes or until soft. Be careful not to burn your onion or garlic.
- Add the lentils and stir to coat in onion mix.
- Add the bay leaves and stock.
- Bring to a boil then add the sausages back into the dish.
- Cover and cook in the oven for 1 hour.
- After 1 hour, remove from oven and add tomatoes and kale. Add some more liquid if necessary.
- Cover. Cook for another 30 minutes or until lentils are tender.
- Discard bay leaves. Stir in parsley and season with salt and pepper.
- Garnish with cherry tomatoes.
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21.08.11 | 
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