Rack of venison with turkey-venison jus

Mrs. Dude and I have a deal. Over the Christmas holidays, she gets a traditional smoked turkey dinner (I'd rather have a goose or duck or squab than turkey). We make all the fixings. In exchange, I get to cook whatever I want for the rest of the holidays. I confess, I do end up going a little hog-wild. This year, I walked past the meat counter at Whole Foods, and the rack of venison spoke to me. I had to have it. As an impulse buy, I brought home that rack of venison.

I modified the rack of venison with jus recipe from Meat: A Kitchen Education. The basic recipe for the jus requires some meat schmutz (That is, the brown stains on the pan you get from browning meat). James Peterson supplies the extra schmutz by browning some veal stew meat. I provided it using some turkey schmutz I had from browning some turkey necks. Substitute whatever meat schmutz you have on hand.

1 rack of venison (1 ½ lb)
2 cups turkey stock
turkey (or other meat) schmutz from browning the meat
1 tbsp salt (sel gris)
pepper
1 shallot 

Start with a beautiful rack o' venison. Look at that beautiful slab o' meat. Pull it out of the fridge an hour in advance to come up to room temperature.



After reading Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, I've been experimenting with more different finishing salts. In this particular case, I used a sel gris I got from Penzey's. It's a large crystal salt.



It makes a nice crust when you pat it on the outside of the rack of venison.



Dust the venison with fresh cracked pepper. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Slice the shallot, and place in the pan under the venison. Place the rack into the oven, bake for 25ish minutes, or until it registers 130°F when you insert a thermometer into the side, avoiding the bone. That'll give you a nice medium-rare venison.

Meanwhile, deglaze your schmutz with turkey stock. I heated the pan I had used to brown turkey necks for a few minutes with the turkey stock in there, scraping periodically.





When you pull the rack of venison out of the oven, transfer the rack to a cutting board and cover with foil to rest for ten-fifteen minutes.



Transfer the deglazed schmutz to your venison pan. Deglaze that schmutz over medium-high heat. Add turkey stock as necessary to keep the pan from drying out.



Look at that delicious stuff. Finally, pour through a fine sieve shortly before serving.



Once you've rested your venison, carve into individual ribs.



Bask in the wonder of venison.



Love that salt crust.



Serve with a little jus dribbled on top.



Delicioso. Two out of three members of the Dude family *loved* it. Mrs. Dude found the venison to be a bit gamy for her taste. I found different parts of the rack to have different amounts of gaminess, but I loved them all. And the turkey-venison jus complimented everything perfectly.

Served with:

Turkey gravy

Smoked turkey provides a bit of a challenge when it comes to making gravy. How do you catch and maintain quality drippings and schmutz when you have your turkey on a grill? Clearly not insurmountable, but a bit of a challenge nonetheless. Well, why not skip that step entirely. A stock-based gravy, then. I use a small modification to Ruhlman's version of gravy, which you can make in advance, and if you're organized, doesn't need to be some crazy last step.

4 tbsp flour
6 tbsp butter
1 large onion
kosher salt as needed
heart and gizzards
1 cup white wine
4 cups turkey stock

Melt 4 tbsp of butter over medium heat. Add the flour, a bit at a time, whisking constantly. Continue to stir over medium heat while this roux darkens to a nice golden brown.

Remove from heat, and set aside the roux.

Meanwhile, finely mince the onion, the heart and gizzards.

Melt the remaining butter in a pan over medium heat. Sauté the onion until translucent. Toss in the heart and gizzard bits.  Turn up the heat to medium-high. Continue cooking, until you start to develop a nice layer of brown schmutz on the pan and on the outside of the meat, about 8 minutes.

Deglaze the pan with the wine. Stir to remove any delicious brown stuff on the bottom of the pan. When you've removed all the schmutz from the pan, add the turkey stock. Add back the roux, a bit at a time, until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.

Simmer over low heat for thirty minutes, to reduce slightly and to meld the flavours. Serve.

This gravy is easily as rich and flavourful as anything you make directly using drippings from the pan. And the convenience of making it a bit in advance, combined with the sheer ridiculous flavour, makes it a no-brainer to add to your turkey feast.

Happy New Year.

A tradition has developed in the Dude household over the last 3 years. Dr. Ricky comes to town from Houston and we have a kitchen extravaganza of sorts. This year we celebrated by serving 11 dishes to bring in 2011. If we continue on that path, 2020 looks to be a challenging New Year's Eve...

The menu:



You'll notice there are 12 dishes there. We included an extra so that we could drop one out and still reach 11. The 11 dishes we served:

Duck fat confited russet potatoes and miso glazed calabasita squash:



You know you're having fun when you are blowtorching a relative of zucchini. Indeed, guests walked in just as the blowtorch came out.  A great visual to set the tone for the night.

Hamachi sashimi Peruian-style:



After slicing and seasoning the fish, hot oil was dripped onto the fish. Nice way to start the meal, I'm going to be cooking with sashimi quality fish more often.

Roasted brussel sprouts with mint and sambal olek:



Another surprise hit. Brussel sprouts and mint.

Smoked tamarind pork ribs with slow-roasted apple:



Ribs will get a post of their own in the future. But they were marinated in tamarind, garlic, soy sauce, hoisin and sriracha. Then smoked for 5 hours over pecan wood, and glazed with the reduced marinade.  Yum. Served next to slow-roasted apple.

Bagna cauda with vegetables:



This one is becoming part of the canon. Dropped out the anchovy paste, and used whole anchovies instead. Delicious.

Two bacons with raclette on toast with shiso:



Two bacons were a home-made, home-smoked bacon, and a buckboard bacon from Cochon butcher in New Orleans, fried and layered onto a home-baked bread. Smothered in melted raclette cheese and served with a spot of shiso on top. Yum.

Deep-fried chicken liver with Sichuan salt and rhubarb sauce:



Comment of the night: "You keep making me eat things I don't like. Like chicken livers. And you make me like them!".

Savory huitlacoche cheesecake:



The hit of the night. This cheesecake compensated for being one of the most unattractive pieces of food I've ever seen. It's grey. The cheesecake looks like mortar.  But what flavour.  Corn truffles indeed.

Smoke, tobacco and blackberry:



Taken from the Alinea cookbook.  An unusual mix of smoky, acid and salt.

Yuzu/Meyer lemon cream tart:



We used the same recipe as the lemon cream tart. Substitute yuzus (6) and Meyer lemon (1) for the lemon zest. Most of the juice came from the Meyer lemons, and we used a shortcake crust.

2003 Chateau Lafaurie Peyraguey Sauternes:



Brought by one of our guests. This sauternes provided a lovely break. Crisp, sweet and complex. Really, really nice.

Sahlep saffron ice cream:



A take on the Turkish ice cream dondurma.  A lovely saffron flavour with an unusual texture.

Some of these will get full out posts of their own in the future. But for now, I wanted to share our New Year's Eve with you.

Happy New Year one and all.

Pepperoni bread

We've been having our annual holiday party since 1998. In every city we've lived, we have a regular crew of friends who attend the party. And amongst our scientist friends, there are more than a few cooks (turns out, bench the skills that are required to succeed at bench science make for being good in the kitchen). One of regular attendees in Houston is a good friend, biochemist, genome biologist and fantastic Italian-American cook. His contribution, without fail, was his pepperoni bread. We left Houston in 2003, but this pepperoni bread is still a regular part of our party.

2 tsp dry yeast
¼ C warm water
1 C warm milk
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
3 - 3½ C all purpose flour
1 C thin sliced pepperoni
grated monterey-jack cheese

tomato sauce

Mix the water, yeast, milk and sugar in a large bowl. Give a few minutes to let the yeast hydrate and get all fired up. Mix in the flour bit by bit. Mix in the salt and oil. Flour a board and knead for 15 minutes by hand (or about 7 minutes if you're using a mixer). Put into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a cloth.

Allow to rise for two hours. Split dough in half, and roll into two balls on a lightly floured surface.



Allow to rise for 15 minutes.

Roll out each ball with a rolling pin into a rectangle, roughly five inches by twelve inches. Layer on the pepperoni, like a pizza (i.e., leave the edges clear).



Cover the pepperoni with a thin layer of grated cheese.



Roll up the dough tightly into a log. Pinch the seams shut.



Place the loaves onto an oiled cookie sheet. Allow to rise for another half hour while you preheat the oven at 375°F. Bake the loaves for 20-25 minutes until browned nicely.



Either slice and serve now, or let cool. This pepperoni bread is best served hot. Toast the loaf in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 300°F. Slice and serve.



Dip the slices of bread in briefly warmed tomato sauce. This bread is always a Christmas party hit, we get cleaned out within minutes of removing them from the oven. Greasy, salty, cheesy tastiness. Yum.