Venison Stew

Friday August 22

We'd invited Fanny over for dinner, so we wanted to whomp up something special. We started off with Holt's home-baked focaccia, spread with herbed goat cheese or "Moroccan thumbprint" eggplant relish from Featherstone winery, and spicy Sicilian green olives. The wines were a couple of our new local favorites, a 2006 Henry of Pelham unoaked Chardonnay and Featherstone Gamay Noir 2006, which made a nice transition to the meat course.

We'd gotten some venison from Lakeland Meats, and since it was predicted to be one of the hottest days so far, we decided to make a slow-cooked stew in the crockpot. The basics are here: for an Anglican benison on your venison, but there were a few variations. For the marinade, we used gin instead of juniper berries instead of cloves; and anybody who doesn't want to die would not marinate meat at room temperature for twelve hours, but in the fridge overnight. The next day, after braising the meat, we added roasted onions and carrots (roasted to improve the dark flavor), lashings of red wine, more thyme and rosemary, and in the last two hours, cubed Yukon gold potatoes and in the last hour, big sliced mushrooms. It was thick and savory, and went perfectly with the 2007 Cline Sonoma Syrah that Fanny had brought.

For dessert, Holt gave up and ran the stove to make old Joy's Peach Cake Cockaigne, which appears in our copy with a check mark and "Helene" next to it, which is quite a mark of honor in our book. For this one, we used Blazingstar peaches from last Saturday's farmers' market, further Canadianized with a little maple syrup and ginger rather than vanilla extract and cinnamon. It almost burst with peachy sweetness, and made a fine finale.