Fit for a Goddess: Venison Diane

After invoking the name of the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana in my last posting I decided to give an account of applying the classic recipe Steak Diane to a nice section of venison backstrap.  I'm certainly not the first person to do this, in fact a few sources I Googled up indicated that Steak Diane has its origin as a venison recipe.  However, like most of these recipes it was new to me.  I consulted a couple of noteworthy, trusted internet sources as well as my lovingly stained copy of Joy of Cooking (of course) to decide on the exact ingredients.  

Some people get paid to put logos in pics like this LOL

I began by sauteing the salted venison steak in butter, which is always scary to me as it is easy to screw up by using high heat.  This time I kept it at a nice, moderate heat and had good success achieving a nice browned layer teaming with Maillard reactions.  I took the meat from the pan, set it aside, then added two minced shallots and a few cloves of minced garlic to the pan and stirred them over medium heat until the shallots were translucent.  Then it was time to deglaze with brandy and condense the fluids a bit.  Soon it was time to add about a cup or so of beef stock, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a bit more than a table spoon of mustard, and a bit more than two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce.  This all got stirred together and simmered on low for a few minutes to further reduce.  Now its time to add the tasty tasty fat, in the form of a healthy dose of heavy cream, enough to turn the mixture a nice mocha color.  

Instead of larger steak slices, I decided to cut the backstrap into bit-sized chunks and mix it in with the sauce.  I served it with garlic and butter mashed red potatoes and some simple steamed broccoli (we like potatoes and broccoli, I'm sure you've seen those sides before in my posts).  The sauce was beautiful, very rich and thick, going equally well with the potatoes as with the venison.  This is definitely one of those simple recipes that turn out a delicious dish, I'd be happy to serve it in larger quantities at a dinner party.  

Saturday's hunt at 40 Acre Pines was somewhat different, an approaching front pushed a lot of rain through before daylight, it stopped just shortly before we arrived.  I hoped that maybe the deer stayed bedded all night as it was the dark of the moon and raining and would get up to eat at daylight.  Two days before I moved my stand to the other half of the property, on the other side of the bedding area (well, we hope, obviously haven't walked in there in months).  Saturday morning before I climbed up in the stand I put out some strips with buck "attractant" on a nearby oak shrub.  As you can tell from the recipe post taking the place of a much more jubilant announcement there was no success.  I heard maybe two shots that morning, not very close by.  

This is the last week of muzzleloader, Saturday is General Gun so it will be time to take Aunt Mary's rifle for a walk.  I guess I'm mostly looking forward to the week before Thanksgiving that does are legal, that's likely my best hope for actually getting meat (and coincidentally to continue the cooking aspect of EMD).  That is, if any deer at all actually decide to move around in daylight hours around here.