Venison Stew

I was given a leg of venison by my dad. He knows a guy whose son hunts. None of them seem too keen on it, but I am. Have had venison a few times and it is always delicious. Bit pricey and tricky to get, so was very happy with this.

Venison Stew

Ingredients

1.5 kg of venison leg - chopped into chunks
2 Rashers of smoked bacon, roughly chopped
1 Parsnip
5 Carrots
3 Tbsp of redcurrant jelly
1 Onion
3 Sticks of Celery
1 Beef stock cube

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
Peel and roughly chop the vegetables. Fry them in a little olive oil in a large pot suitable for the oven.
When they have softened remove them from the pot and put aside.
In the same pot fry the bacon until some of the fat starts to come out. Brown the chunks of venison in with the bacon. Return the vegetable mixture to the pot and cover the whole lot with boiling water from the kettle. Add the beef stock cube and make sure it is dissolved.
Bring to the boil and place it in the oven with the lid on.
It will be ready in about 90 minutes. Check the meat is tender before serving.
I serve this with steamed potatoes and turnip.

Sort of Baked Ziti

I was a fan of the Sopranos and they always seemed to be eating stuff called Ziti. I looked it up and there are as many recipes as there are Italians it would appear, so here is my take on it.

Ingredients

Meat

• 600g Minced beef
• 2 Smoked bacon rashers chopped

Sauce

• 1 Onion chopped
• 1 Red pepper chopped small
• 3 Carrots chopped small
• 3 Sticks of celery chopped small
• 3 Cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 Tins of plum tomatoes
• 2 Tbsp of tomato puree
• Splash of balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp cooking oil (olive is good, but not extra virgin)

Everything else

• 200g Cheddar cheese, or enough to cover the dish generously
• Pasta - I used penne, but anything smallish will do
• Parmesan to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
Fry the beef and bacon until fully coloured. Remove from the pot to make the rest of the sauce.

Make a standard tomato sauce. Usually called Marinara. Mine is like this one, but without added sugar. Cook all of the sauce ingredients except the vinegar, tomatoes and tomato purée on a medium heat until the onion is softened - about 20 minutes. Then add the tomatoes and vinegar and stir. Continue to cook until the carrots are soft.

Cook the pasta in plenty boiling water.
Mix the sauce, meat and pasta and pour into a buttered baking dish.
Cover with lots of cheddar cheese and bake in a 200 degree C oven for about 10 minutes. Until the cheese on top is beginning to brown and is nice and chewey.

I serve this with a rocket salad with toasted pine nuts.

Michael Pollan's 'Cooked'

Like everything that I have read by Michael Pollan, Cooked is excellent and thought provoking. It goes through some of the history of cooking and importantly why we still do and don't cook. Some sad trends - watching cooking up, doing cooking down, but some very positive stuff too.

The best thing was when I had finished I felt inspired to make up some recipes of my own. There are 4 recipes in the back, one from each of the main sections of the book, but this book gave me the confidence to try my own stuff out. It's working well so far - well except for the sauerkraut. I don't know if I have the guts to roast a whole pig overnight. Well I do, but my wife might have words with me over that. But a big chunk of meat is getting slowly bbq'ed this summer.

If you like to cook this book is a great addition to your library and it is not just another cook book.

Low Carb Lamb Tagine

This is really just a recipe published by someone else, but I have made a few small changes to make it low carb and simplified it a bit.

Here it is on the taste.com.au website.

So I used lamb pieces from my butcher. 1.5 kg is a huge amount. I think I would use about 1 kg next time.
I did not add the honey or the butter. I don't have a problem with the butter from a diet perspective, but this dish was fatty enough as it was. The Taste recipe involves removing the meat from the sauce at the end and reducing the sauce with the butter. This seems like a nice thing to do, but I did not bother - it looked great as it was. Also I added everything at the start of cooking rather than in stages with the exception of the olives which I threw in at the end and allowed to heat through.

I served it with steamed vegetables and it was delicious. Will definitely be making this again.

Low carb diets gain traction (and Scrambled eggs for lunch)

According to this guy we should be cutting out the sugar and simple carbohydrates and eating more fat. Having watched a bunch of videos and discussed this with a few friends I am inclined to agree. Getting people to accept this notion en masse is going to be a struggle. Not just because it involves cutting out cakes, biscuits and most processed foods, but because of the powerful lobby groups who would like to keep things the way they are - only more so.

The idea however seems to be gaining momentum. There was an Irish Times article this week discussing the idea and Scientific American ran this story in September. The science behind this is compelling and people have been searching in increasing numbers for a solution to weight gain and more recently metabolic syndrome. This may be 'it'. Hopefully all this activity this signals a change.

If the idea does get widespread adoption supermarkets are going to have to change. There are whole swathes of them filled with sugar and simple carbs.

Although this is extremely simple, it tastes great. We only discovered it recently, so I thought it was worth sharing. So with low carbohydrate diets in mind here is a delicious weekend lunch for 1.

Smoked Salmon scrambled eggs

Ingredients:
3 eggs
About 4 slices of smoked salmon
A tablespoon of full fat cream
A large knob of butter for cooking
Pepper

Method:
Beat the eggs lightly in the bowl. Add pepper to your taste, but no salt. Smoked salmon is very salty already. Now tear up the smoked salmon into bite sized pieces. Melt the large knob of butter into a non stick pan on high heat. When the butter foams add the eggs and scrape the bottom of the pan continuously with a wooden spoon until the eggs are almost cooked. Add the smoked salmon and the cream. Mix the whole lot until cooked - don't over do them. Serve immediately as the eggs will keep cooking if you leave them hanging around. No bread to accompany, but it is filling enough in itself.

Ideas for no sugar/ low carb lunches

This is just a list of stuff that I pick from now that I am trying a low carb diet as espoused by Robert Lustig at UCSF.

Smoked mackerel
Smoked salmon
Sardines
Tinned mackerel
Pickled onions - unsugared
Kimchi
Brie
Cheddar
Olives
Ham slices
Peanut butter
Brazil nuts, pistachios, walnuts - all unsalted.
Raw carrot

I basically eat a bunch of this - whatever we have - until I think I have had enough. No bread or other flour in there. This fills me up fine and I might have a piece of fruit in the afternoon between lunch and dinner. I am finding I that after dinner (which I usually supplement with some nuts, smoked salmon or whatever I fancy from the above list) that I don't want to snack later on. This can only be a good thing.
I will add to this list as I find more foods that are suitable for this diet.

Low Carb Beef Stew

This dinner is one of our staples, but a recent change to low carb/no sugar requires a few changes.

Ingredients:

600g stewing beef
1 Tin of tomatoes
Half a celeriac
4 carrots
2 onions
1 beef stock cube - made up as per instructions
3 sticks celery
Handful of sage leaves chopped finely
Small handful of marjoram chopped finely (leave the stalks out)
Small glass of red wine

Method:

Peel and roughly chop all of the vegetables.
Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (not extra virgin) to a large casserole on high heat. Fry the onions and beef for a few minutes until the beef is well coloured. Add all the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to very low and leave it to cook for 2 to 3 hours. Exact time will depend on the cut of beef used.

Differences from 'Normal':

• No potatoes used 
• No tomato puree used - this usually has added sugar
• We just serve this on its own. It has enough veg without side dishes
• It contains more beef than we would normally use for this size of casserole
• Check all ingredients used for sugar
• The red wine might be a bit of a rule breaker, but we add it early so most of the alcohol is gone and besides, it really lifts this dish