18th Century Mountain Venison

Having had wild duck (slow baked over water) with Apricot Brandy sauce, Speckled Belly Goose, rotisserie grilled with plum, butter and Port wine sauce, and many other tasty dishes prepared with game from the great outdoors, I cringe when I hear the inevitable, "Deer? I have them make summer sausage out of it, that’s the only way I can stand the taste." Or, "Sometimes, if I get a real young tender one, I make chili meat out of it." Makes me want to gag, and then cry, and then gag some more. Chili meat, my ass.

But I do know that its all in the treatment of the carcass and the cooking techniques that make the difference between a venison feast and chili meat. So, tonight, wanting to serve venison to my deserving wife (who loves it), and thinking about all the recipes close to being lost to history, I went to the diary of one Rev. Robert Schroeder, who in recounting his visits to settlers in Kentucky in the 1790's, and describing the fare he was offered in their homes, inadvertently provided me all these years later with recipes for an authentic 18th century mountain meal.

Saute thin sliced venison steaks in a thin layer of duck fat. (I shot the deer, I crept right up, gave no warning whatsoever and dropped him where he stood - munching on the remains of another deer - color me unchivalrous. The duck fat is obtained by hauling your fat, lazy ass out of bed at dark o’clock and driving to a slough, setting out decoys and yawning at your dog over steaming Thermos coffee until the ducks drift in at sunrise and then you down a couple of greenhead drakes for the dog to retrieve and you go home and crawl back into bed.)

Saute the venison no more than 1.5 minutes on each side. Brown on the outside, pink on the inside. Its done, and it doesn’t taste like shoe leather. Pull the meat from the saute pan and pour in a half cup of Brandy (or dark Puerto Rican Rum) to deglaze the pan, (no, I didn’t know what that meant either till I Googled it ) and then mix in some buttermilk, pressed garlic, salt, pepper and a little water diluted cornstarch for thickening. Makes a great sauce to compliment the venison.

At the same time, you’ve been sauteeing hominy, mixed with vadalia onion, some sweet corn, red pepper, salt, ground black pepper and parsley. Corn bread with butter and honey just about finish the meal served to the good Reverend Schroeder, but you should serve it with good cold buttermilk for the final authentic touch. Merlot or Pinot Noir were a little hard to come by in those days.

They ate well in those days. It doesn’t get more"organic" than this. Now there are many people who would still rather have a Big Mac, fries and a Coke than to even think about eating (Heaven forbid! Wild game). But I’m not one of them and I have my own cookbook, in which venison chili is noticeably absent, and the idea of Martha Stuart’s farm-raised venison makes me want to giggle till my eyes tear up. So that’s me, the anachronistic carnivore.