His Noodly Appendage: Oriental-like Venison Noodle Soup

When I finished boning out the meat from the shoulder and ham my brother gave me, I realized I must make broth with the bones.  I used my BFC (Big F'ing Cleaver) to chop them into manageable bits and then proceeded to boil them down with onions, celery, carrots and bay leaf in a classic broth fashion.  After a few hours of simmering I strained off the liquid and let it sit on the stove-top overnight.  In the morning the fluid had clarified itself and I carefully decanted it off of the sediment and simmered it down for about a hour more.  I basically ended up with about 20 ounces of slightly salted juicy essence of venison that I chilled in the fridge for a couple of nights.

Before...

...During...

...After

I agonized a bit about what to do with this broth, but I'm feeling a general Asian kick right now after that delicious meal at Xaio Bao Biscuit so I quickly realized I needed to do some kind of venison noodle soup.  Ramen-esque if you would.  I actually did some reading about how to make ramen noodles from scratch but honestly for my first attempt I didn't even want to mess with it.  Instead I just picked up a pack of whole-grain linguini from Publix. I did go to one of our local Asian grocery stores to pick up a pack of miso paste and a package of mung bean sprouts.

I selected a packet of boned shoulder meat for this endeavor.  I spent some time cutting out the more obvious silverskin.  BTW, this was still partially frozen which really does make the meat easier to cube.

Out of the vacuum bag

Cubed about an inch on each side.  I love how dark red venison is.

I took the venison stock (which had actually gelled up nicely in the fridge overnight, very lovely) and combined it with about 32 ounces of water and slowly heated it to a simmer.  Meanwhile I went out to the garden and picked about the only thing I still have growing right now, a handful of young tender collard greens. 

So pretty!

I cut out the mid-rib and shredded the collard leaves into strips. 

I always use a knife to de-rib 6-8 leaves at a time, then just fold the leaves and slice.

I pulled out my trusty cast-iron pan.  I don't think I've written about this pan yet, it was just a run-of-the-mill find from the local flea market, but something about really spoke to me the first time I laid eyes on it.  I've tried other cast iron pans before, but without much success.  For whatever reason, this one is perfect and I've really become comfortable with it.  Hopefully it won't be going anywhere.

Starting to brown the venison.

I then attempted to brown the venison on each side over medium high heat.  I admit, I did get anxious and crowd the meat too much, so only the first side really browned correctly before the liquid rendered out and it really just sort of started stewing in its own juices.  Oh well.  After that was as good as it was getting I dumped the "browned" meat into the stock pot.  I put some more olive oil in the pan and stir fried the collards for a bit with a few cloves of diced garlic, just enough to make it change color and brown it slightly.  I deglazed the pan with a few large spoonfuls of the stock and re-added it to the pot as well.

Starting to simmer.

I poured in about a 8th cup of lower-sodium soy sauce and a few splashes of fish sauce.  I wasn't sure how much was correct so I was pretty conservative.  After simmering a few hours I went ahead and started boiling the pasta.  When the pasta was about ready I dumped the mung bean sprouts into the soup then turned the heat off.  I then took roughly a quarter cup of miso past and combined it with about two cups of warm water, stirring to mix the two.  When that was well mixed I combined it into the soup as well.  The result:

Tasty-looking.  It smelled pretty good at this point too.

 

Turns out I was a little off on the soy to my tastes, and of course I added a bit of sriracha sauce for heat.  I loved the flavor of this broth in general though, and the contrast of soft collard green and noodles with the crunchy mung bean sprout was awesome.

I remembered something from a few years ago as I was scooping up spoonfuls.  On some random hunting forum, couldn't tell you which, a typical thread about what a "big buck" is was rolling.  A short, concise response caught my eye "A doe eats better."   I expected this meat to be a bit gamey, and it definitely was.  A buck shot in the ass with buckshot after running from dogs is not going to be as tasty as a doe dropped in cold blood, I'm sure.  I can see I might as well forget trying to cut any steaks from the ham, as I did with the two Catalina does.  Oh well, there's plenty of recipes out there made to work with gamey, I'm sure I'll find a few.

Beggars can't be choosers, after all.