ESC #35

This turned out to be a pretty pioneer-y menu featuring the kinds of things that Western settlers would have have in their cellars this time of year: venison, apples, cabbage, onions, carrots, etc. And it was really one of our best menus in terms of the way it all came together. The bang-to-buck ratio on the brie was off the charts (provided you have the bacon jam around; honestly, next time, I’ll just fry up some bacon and crumble it into whatever chutney I have around, and call it a day on that ingredient). The biscuits were great—flakey and not rubbery as sweet potato biscuits tend to be. Wolfgang Puck’s apple coleslaw was perhaps unsurprisingly great. But the star of the night was the venison stew: so simple and yet so much more than the sum of its parts, as Old World recipes can be at their best. The recipe I used isn’t on the Internet anymore, but basically you take 2 lbs of venison cut into chunks, flour them with salt and pepper, brown them with 2 C chopped onion and 2 minced garlic cloves, and then cook the whole thing for 3 hours in 2 C of white or red wine (spiced with 2 T of Hungarian sweet paprika, 2 t smoked paprika, 8 juniper berries, 1 bay leaf, and 3 allspice berries) until the venison is tender and the sauce is thick. Apparently it’s called a pörkölt, but all the recipes I found online were more complex than the one I used. Not that I think it would be bad to add tomatoes, peppers, egg, etc.: I just think the simplicity of the recipe we used was pretty special.