Sorry Bambi But Your Meat Is Just So Good

Its been a long time, too long, since I have last posted. I was going to post about my Thanksgiving Dinner but I figured it was to easy to talk about it. Then I was going to talk about my Christmas Eve dinner that I cooked but I didn't. I also could have blogged about the Christmas Day Dinner but I got lazy. I have cooked some great meals and some not so great meals. I was going to blame it on being busy with work and life, but the truth is I have been too lazy to blog. One of my many New Year's Resolutions is to blog more.

To ring in the New Year, Noel and I went and visited our friends Erik and Sami J on Martha's Vineyard. Two of the best people I have ever met. We had a few great meals, drank good wine and beer, and watched some great fireworks. Erik is the ultimate outdoors man!! One day when he got home he noticed a deer in his backyard. He grabbed his bow and got the doe. How bad ass is that?! I bribed Erik with a few bottles of wine and he sent me home with a few venison steaks and a roast. They had a great cookbook on how to cook venison, and I found a few great recipes, so I couldn't wait to get home and try them out.

Tonight's recipe is Saffroned Venison and Beans from The Complete Venison Cookbook. Sounds easy enough, and I love using Saffron. All you need is a cup Navy Beans (these are called Navy Beans not after their color but because they were a staple in U.S. Navy cooking. I was looking for 20 minutes before reading labels), a  pound of venison cut into cubes, bacon fat (venison is very lean meat and bacon fat helps. Its easy to cook up some bacon for the fat), three tomatoes quartered, small onion sliced thin, can of corn, bell pepper quartered, 1/8 tsp pepper, 1/4 tsp saffron, 1 tsp brown sugar, 1/2 cup dry white wine and two tsp salt.

You need to first cook the beans. This is easy, but takes a long time. First, make sure to rinse the beans. Then put them in a saucepan and add enough water to cover the beans. Bring them to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for two hours. Add the salt and cook for another hour. As the beans are finishing, take a few strips of bacon over medium/low heat in a skillet. Render the fat off the bacon (this is my favor part...eat the bacon). Brown the venison. Add the tomatoes, onion, salt, pepper, saffron, brown sugar and wine. Let simmer until the meat is tender. Drain the beans and add them with the bell pepper and corn to the venison and cook until the bell pepper is tender.

The meal came out well. The beans could have cooked a little longer, I could have used smaller, riper tomatoes and, had I known it would come out more like a stew, I would have cut the bacon up and added it to the mix. But for the first venison meal I've made in more than 10 years it came out better than expected. I can't wait to make the other cuts of venison I have.

So what do you drink with venison? Cabernet Franc, Carmenere, Chianti, Gigondas (or anything from The Rhone Valley), Syrah- the choices are endless. Venison has a great gamy taste that goes really well with many big, bold, bad-ass wines. If I had a Cab Franc in my cellar right now, I would have opened that. But, sad monkey, I didn't have one. So I opened my BOOM BOOM Syrah. This Columbia Valley Syrah comes from one of my favorite wine makers, Charles Smith.This wine is perfect Washington wine. Bright, fresh and smooth. Full Bodied, dark meaty fruit with a touch of spice and sweet tobacco.