Roast Pheasant, Gravy & Haricot Beans

This dish doesn't look like much in the photo - but my children loved it! And it smelled so good...

At a loss for what to make one day (not really, but it sounds nice) I decided to try something a little different - we all like beans, we love sautéd vegetables and I actually had a roasted pheasant on hand. Something else I had - was a lovely gravy made from the meat.

I soaked and cooked the haricots, they are such a versatile bean and we don't eat enough of them. Perhaps because they are mostly associated with baked beans and that's all. However, they lend an earthy, full bodied flavour to any dish as well as make it that much more hearty.

Next I sautéd a few vegetables - onion, garlic, leek, grated carrot, broccoli etc. and added these to the beans. The gravy and meat were warmed up - all of this was added together to make a little stew. It was thickened because of the gravy...

Steaming hot - I just seasoned it with a little salt and pepper (there were lots of seasonings already in the roasted pheasant) and served it with some thick crusty herbed spelt bread. The children loved it - what I liked about it is that it was fully balanced - so simple yet tasty and filling.

I am planning on making this again - perhaps with a different meat, a different type of bean (maybe chickpeas) and sweet potato or something similar. This is endlessly versatile - and when spiced up, it's also warming and seasonal.

April

Beans are so versatile!

Venison Cassoulet

I might as well refer to this dish as accidental Venison Cassoulet, because I never intended to make a cassoulet when the day started. However, I did have a bowl of beans soaked and ready to cook, some veggies that needed to be used and most of the meat in the house right now is wild game...

So, at the beginning of my day, I wanted to make a favourite around here - baked beans. I started out making a veggie sauce in the slow cooker while I cooked the haricot beans in some seaweed. My bean sauce is night shade free - as these interfere with spirituality and contain toxins.

However, I still make a great tasting sauce using a base of beet root, carrots, sweet potatoes, herbs (and a few others on this particular day that needed to be used up!). Once the sauce was made, and the beans were cooked I combined these into crock pots and slow roasted them in the oven with a little cloves and bay leaves. 

The beans came out smelling and looking great - the kids ate them, the dogs and cat had some - but there was still a crock pot left over! I was cooking a venison roast for another as yet undetermined dish and had the bright idea of just cutting up this nicely done piece of meat (it was slow roasted with shallots, garlic, leeks, onion, broccoli and honey mustard marinade) and adding it to the beans.

Once I put the now several large pieces of meat and vegetables into the pot of beans and sauce - it closely resembled and smelled very much like a wild game cassoulet... which is a very hearty meal for this time of year.

This is a dish I will definitely be making again and can't wait to try it when I finish my cleanse...

April

Crock Pot of Baked beans

Wild Rabbit Stew - A change for the better

Today I made Wild Rabbit Stew - it is one of my favourite meals from way back in my childhood and I still feel it is such a wholesome meal. What is more, it is simple to make and rabbit is fairly easy to come by, especially this time of the year.

Wild rabbit is lean and being wild caught, not full of medicated feeds or even weird GMO grains. I can taste and feel the difference whenever I eat something wild caught (or organic) as opposed to the heavily treated type of meat or fish.

And there is a huge difference in flavour, texture and perhaps anything else you might be expecting in meats. I ate a lot of wild rabbit when I was growing up - along with other game such as sea ducks, and moose.

Including wild game into your diet, certainly when it is in season is a healthy idea...there are no unhappy bunnies in the wild. They are free to live as they should and this means an important source of superior food for us.

To cook wild rabbit it is best to marinade it overnight first. I use something simple such as balsamic vinegar, honey mustard, bay leaves, olive oil, salt and pepper - with a little water. I also use a slow cooker to cook the rabbit first before I put the vegetables in to make a stew.

Rabbit is full of tiny little bones and I have small children - so the meat is cooked first, then taken off the bones, lightly floured and added to a ready stew of seasoned (sage, thyme, rosemary, lovage) vegetables.  I check the liquid from the rabbit carefully before I add it to the stew as well.

Once all is assembled, let it cook for another hour or so and then stand in the slow cooker to cool down. This makes a most delicious meal for the whole family which is both nourishing and low in fat. We all enjoy our rabbit stew in the winter months.

April

Wild Rabbit Stew - lots of herbs and veggies!

Wild Venison Goulash

Yesterday was another cold clear day - the kind that winter should be made of...it was fresh and healthy  and we need far more of them. With the cold here, often comes some level of damp - which is in itself not a great way to be at any time of the year.

Thus our greater need for warm, nourishing foods such as soups and stews. I make no secret of the fact that I love to make them and equally enjoy eating them. Give me a good stew any day and I am quite satisfied I have eaten plenty and had all the goodness contained within.

Perhaps that is the main reason why I like making them so much - they are so versatile and you can get all your vegetables in one meal into a well organized pot of stew. With this in mind (and to have something different on our plates) I decided to make a Wild Venison Goulash.

For our purposes here, the main difference between goulash and stew (there aren't many!) is that a goulash would usually contain noodles of some kind and maybe less vegetables. To make a meal using venison, it also would have to be marinated and slow cooked.

Starting with 1 kg of diced venison, I simply added it (rolled in spelt flour) to the slow cooker with about 5 onions, lemon juice, crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme and several bay leaves. This I left on high to begin cooking while I added 2 cups of boiling water.

The key here to a nice taste is probably the onion (mixture of shallots and onions) and garlic - there are lots added and the meat gets to cook all day in these juices. After a few hours I added in some, but not too much, carrots, sweet potato, pumpkin and turnip. Just enough to notice there were vegetables in there.

Again I left the slow cooker on for a couple more hours, only this time I turned it down to a low heat setting. Once I was satisfied the goulash was cooked - I added 1 cup of noodles. I would have preferred to make them myself, however, next time I hope to be able to do that.

Within about 1/2 hour, the goulash was ready - at this point you can add some fresh goat's yogurt to the pot or even to individual bowls once it is served. But my children usually like this dish plain - and it was enjoyed all the same, very much so!

It's an easy meal to make and a nice change from an ordinary stew....

April

Wild Venison Goulash