The falling leaves… drift by my window…

Or not, as the case may be. Even though today was the day I designated for Nigella’s DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8, and it’s been bitingly cold for the past 3 weeks, today we were blessed with clear skies, bright sun, and unseasonable warmth. Dang.

DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8

344. Chestnut and pancetta salad
345. Roast venison fillet with apple purée and rosemary sauce
346. Quinces poached in Muscat

The venison is served with peas, and a potato and celeriac mash, whilst the quinces are served with lemon ice-cream.

This dinner is for 8 - I halved all quantities to feed myself, my parents, and my very good friend Frances.

So this afternoon, I poached the quinces. You peel, core and quarter them first, reserving the peel and trimmings (this will help the syrup thicken, you see). To make the syrup, boil up some muscat with water, sugar and spices. Then you put the peel and cores in an ovenproof dish, cover with the quince quarters, and pour the syrup over. They need 2.5 hours cooking, well covered, in a 160C oven.


raw quinces


In the oven - don't worry, I covered them with foil.

After cooking, they should look like… well… Nigella describes this point with the singularly most disgusting image I have ever read: “When you take them out, the quinces will be the colour of old-fashioned Elastoplast”.

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. When I read that, all I could think of was manky old bandaids, all dirty and wet and peeling off injured fingers. How disgustingly munting.

Thank goodness, then, that they actually looked pretty good.



After they cool properly, they go a bit darker.


deeper and darker coloured

While they were cooking, I marinated the venison fillet. The marinade consists of red wine, celery, carrot, onion, juniper berries, peppercorns, thyme and bay leaves. You boil the whole lot up, let it cool, and dunk the venison in it.


marinating venison

I did this early in the afternoon, and then went to uni to hand in an assignment, (2 days late, whoops). But after I came home, there was still sooo much shit to do! I still had to make the rosemary sauce for the venison, the apple sauce, the mashed potato and celeriac, the peas, salad and syrup for the quinces! This is when I realized what a high-effort menu this really is.

I mean, 3 separate wine-based reductions? (In the venison marinade, rosemary sauce, and the quince syrup). Ahem!

Anyway, getting back to it… the rosemary sauce is pretty similar to the marinade, but with the addition of beef stock and some different vegetables. You boil it all up, reduce it, and then add some of the marinade before boiling it again.

The apple sauce involves simply peeling and coring apples, and cooking them until pulpy with butter, sugar, cloves and lemon juice. Maybe I could have just used a SPC jar of apple sauce…

For the venison, you take it out of the marinade, sear it all over, and then put it in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes. It needs to rest for about 30 minutes, so remember to factor that into your timings.

While it was cooking, I peeled, chopped and boiled the potatoes and celeriac for the mash.


Celeriac – what a funny looking vegetable!

It was at about this time that Frances, my dinner guest, arrived. And as a short digression, look at this lovely gift she bought me, prefaced with the comment, “I hope you appreciate the joke”. (I did).


elderflower cordial

You can get it at freakin’ Ikea!!! So yeah, I really didn’t need to get my elderflower elderflower concentrate shipped from Tasmania. D’oh.

I was so tired by this stage, and I hadn’t even made the peas yet. Dammit.

Me: Frances, you don’t really want peas tonight, do you?
Frances: Ooh, I love peas!

Ok, ok. I boiled some peas.

The last thing I made was the salad, which involved frying up pancetta until crisp, then tossing in some chestnuts (thawed frozen, saved from Christmas) and warming it through. Then you toss it through lettuce with a Dijon mustard and vinegar dressing. Boom boom, done.

I didn’t bother serving the salad as a first course, but just plonked everything down on the table together.


pile of mash


venison slices


peas and sauce


chestnut pancetta salad


applesauce


applesauce and meat

This menu, despite all the work, was great! I loved the unusual tastes of everything. The highlight of the menu, for me, was the salad - the mealy and sweet chestnuts contrasted fabulously against the salty pancetta. The flavour of the venison was very unusual but not unpleasant, and was lovely and tender. But that mash was really delicious! There was heaps leftover (as expected), and I’m very excited about eating it for lunch tomorrow with leftover rosemary sauce. And even though I nearly gave up on the peas, I'm glad I made them because they really enhanced the menu, visually and taste-wise. (Imagine how brown everything would have been without them!)

And here’s dessert. To finish it off, you have to strain the liquid away and boil it until thickened, then pour it over the quinces. (See, that’s the 3rd wine-based reduction in this menu).


poached quinces

I served it with the lemon ice-cream, which worked out well, as Frances’ favourite flavour is lemon. Nigella recommends half a quince per person, but we were satisfied with a quarter each. This was a lovely dessert, and finished off the meal perfectly.


quince and ice-cream

Overall, I really enjoyed this menu. But if you were to make it for company, make sure you make it for people who you can count on to appreciate the time and effort and expense. (Like Frances, of course).

Leftover quinces are going to become breakfast, with yogurt. Woohoo!

Spring is Here!

Well, it’s the first day of Spring, and the weather is fab. And what do I make for lunch but an incredibly wintry menu? (In my defence, I started making the stew almost a week ago, and I live in Melbourne, where you can easily have four seasons in the one day...)

108. Venison in White Wine (Cooking in Advance)
109. Marsala Muscovado Custard (Dinner)
110. Muskily Spiced Prunes (Dinner)

As I said, this stew can be cooked seriously in advance. On Friday last week, I cubed the meat and let it steep in a mixture of white wine, diced vegetables, peppercorns and juniper berries. Then on Sunday, I drained the meat… we’ve never had venison before and I was surprised at how heavily gamey it was. It’s intense stuff, you can smell it from a mile away. And after two days of steeping, the previously white wine had turned a rich, deep brown.


Rejected marinade vegetables in the colander, now disturbingly dark marinade liquid in the saucepan

Anyway, after having drained the meat, I cooked some onions, porcini mushrooms and other spices, before adding the meat and putting it in the oven for two hours. After it cooled, I left it in the fridge. Finally, on Thursday, I heated the stew, cooked up some Swiss brown mushrooms, stirred them in, and we ate it.


Venison in White Wine

And, as per Nigella’s suggestion, I served it with mashed potatoes and green beans, which were the perfect complement.


Green beans


Mash

We all love mash! I daresay, after much practice and some of Nigella’s tips, I’ve become a mashed potato expert. Basically, you have to let the boiled potatoes steam dry before mashing, and warm the butter, milk and/or cream before beating them in. But whatever method you choose to use, the most important, vital factor in making great mash is to add far more butter and cream than you’d ever let anyone know.


One (big) plate

The stew tastes good, and being able to make it in stages certainly simplifies the whole process. But just to repeat, venison is very, very strong, very gamey, and not something to be eaten often, or in great quantities.

Nigella doesn’t actually recommend a dessert to go with this meal. However, I thought that the marsala custard would work because it’s suggested as one of two possible desserts for a roast venison fillet (in the Dinner chapter).

You have to make the prunes a couple of days in advance, to let them steep. They’re simmered in Earl Grey tea, some marsala, spices and light muscovado sugar, and they smell beautiful.


All the prunes and 1 portion of custard – once poured into a little china bowl, the prunes look like a compote, the type of thing that I’d ordinarily avoid at a hotel breakfast buffet. But I’m converted now, spiced prunes are the way forward.

The custard is a baked custard, so no stress-inducing stirring was involved. You just heat (separately) some marsala and some cream, and then mix them into some eggs, some yolks, some light muscovado and castor sugars. Then you bake it in a bain marie for an hour. The recipe serves eight, and is supposed to be made in a one-litre china bowl. As there are only four of us, I halved the recipe and did it in little ramekins. (And I know Nigella hates dinkiness and individual portions, but I love it. It’s cute, dammit!) They only took half an hour to cook this way.

This custard is absolutely amazing. I wasn’t sure about how my folks would react to it, but my brother took just one bite…

Daniel: This is fucking awesome. Yum… yum… YUM! (Repeated ad nauseum in a hyperactive manner - was it the alcohol or the sugar?)
Dad: See, I’m eating this slowly, to savour it. Is there any more? Can you make this next time I have friends over?

Over the course of lunch, Dad also made some funny quips about how his sisters used to refer to testicles as “Australian prunes”. Ah, classic Dad jokes.


Midway through - check out the layers of colour

This is a good dessert. Very good. On that insanely good level, like the same level of deliciousness as the Pig's Bum... Damn straight.