A Meal Recap

I’ve gotten behind in sharing my cookery, so here’s a quick and dirty run down and some pornographic photos for your enjoyment:

I brought a whole chicken home from the shop last time, and did a homemade version of the pork/poultry rub for it.  I was surprised I actually remembered all the measurements, I just had to scale them down a lot.  Thank goodness for my spatula.  One of my favorite Christmas gifts in recent years is this pair of silicone spatulas that a lady at work got for me because they had skulls on them.  One of them has a conversion chart on the back of it.  These things cost $2 at Target and they have proven invaluable to me.
The first thing I did was cut up a bunch of pats of butter and slipped those underneath the skin in several spots.  Then I coated the chicken in the rub, all over, inside and out.

I realized I’d need some kind of sauce to baste with, and remembered that they typically combine the rub with Italian dressing at the shop, but at the last minute I realized I was all out.  Luckily for me, I’m dating this really smart scientist guy who knows how to make a rough version of it from scratch, so I was able to use that. 

And I roasted . . . and I basted . . . and I roasted . . . and I basted . . . and the outside of this chicken started to caramelize and become meat candy, so I covered it with tinfoil before it turned completely black and rock hard.  An hour and fifteen minutes later, I had a perfect juicy bird on my hands. 

 

I realized that I haven’t tried much of the shop’s sausage, so I took home a pack of bangers one day to learn how to make bangers and mash.  I found a few recipes online; I liked one potato recipe with ground mustard, and a gravy recipe with balsamic and sugar.  The only gravy I’ve ever made has been for my homemade biscuits and gravy—I was very anti-gravy before I learned how to make those.  The onion gravy took a long time and required a lot of attention.  I had no clue how it would turn out, but it was superb and had a great depth of flavor.  The house-made bangers didn’t disappoint, either.  I was happily surprised to have pulled it off; it seems like a simple dish that can be fucked up really easily.  And I’ve only had bangers and mash here, in America, so I have no frame of reference.  Although they came from a really nice, authentic pub, they’re not “the real thing.”  But I think they put brown mustard in their gravy, so I’ll have to try that next time and see what happens.  The picture doesn’t do it justice.

A guy I work with loves to hunt, and brings in venison sausage all the time.  I seem to be the only person who likes it, so a few weeks ago he brought me two venison tenderloins.  His recommendation was to cut them into medallions, bread and deep-fry them.  Frying is really a last resort for me, though.  Aside from its inherent unhealthiness, I didn’t want to mask the taste of the deer.  I’m weird in that I like the gamey flavor.  Plus, this was going to be the scientist’s first venison; I wanted it to taste like venison.  So I did some research online. 

Initially, I thought I’d just take them to the shop and smoke them low and slow in the beef rub, but as it turns out, that’s a bad idea for tenderloin; it needs to be cooked quick and hot because it is such a lean piece of meat.  And, due to its leanness, it dries out really easily, so most recipes suggested wrapping it in bacon for lubrication during cooking.  I was hesitant to do this, because I consider it on par with deep frying—bacon is cheating, basically (because bacon makes everything better).  I didn’t want bacon-flavored venison, but I also didn’t want dried out tenderloin, so I conceded the point. 

I found a recipe that basically described cooking a steak backwards:  roast it first, then sear it off in a hot skillet to crisp it up.  First step was marinating it in soy sauce and sugar for 3 hours—I didn’t leave it the full three hours.  Then you wrap it all in bacon and reserve the marinade to baste with.  You only roast it for half an hour for medium rare.  I don’t think my pan was hot enough when I seared it, because the bacon didn’t crisp up really, but it was still perfectly cooked and delicious.  Amazingly, the venison shined though, despite the bacon and the strong marinade.  This might have to do with me cutting the marinating time short, though.  The meat is soft and juicy and sweet, with that little tang of gaminess.  The scientist liked it, but said the gaminess stayed with him for a long time afterwards.  We sat back, stomachs happily stretched, uncomfortable but not to the point of painful; satisfied sounds emitting our throats in between deep gasps for air.  You know it’s a good meal when it leaves you breathless.