Saturday, March 27, 2010

doe. a deer. a female deer.

so i read the omnivore's dilemma a while ago and it was the final push i needed for local meats. i was already trying to buy most of meat at the local meat market and michael pollan really just knocked it home.

now, i only buy meat at the farmer's market or dumas. it turns out that beef and pork are easy to come by but chicken - fucking chicken - is tough. so tough in fact that since january one i've only bought/cooked it twice. i was lucky enough to snag a whole bird from a friend and i also picked up some
frozen thighs at the market.

so when mike said, "you should make the chicken coconut stuff again" (aka chicken and basil coconut curry over rice) i knew that i would need to adapt it. make it work with the what
we had in the freezer.

and what we have in the freezer is deer. venison if you're fancy.

venison coconut curry it was!

back when i took third place at the library cook-off i got a pretty kick ass penzey's curry spice box. nice.



i mixed together some garam masala and some hot curry with a lil' veggie stock to make a paste and i set it aside.

i snagged a tenderloin from the freezer and cut it into medallions. i seasoned them with a lil' salt and pepper and seared 'em off in a hot skillet and removed them to a plate.



i added some chopped broccoli, red pepper, shallot, mushrooms and scallions to the skillet, cooked it for a minute and added my curry paste. i cooked it for another minute or so and then poured in a can of coconut milk and added some veggie stock.

once it thickened up i added the seared venison and some fresh basil. mmm.



i served this over rice and it was delicious!



i don't need no stinkin' fowl.

2 comments:

B. Kramer said...

That looks tasty. Why is local chicken so hard to come by? Are there really no chicken farms in our area?

the erratic epicurean said...

it's just "out of season." most farms that are legitimately free range/pasture fed don't raise chickens in the winter since it's so cold. i am on a waiting list for brunty farms and will get 2 birds in may. that is why mike and i have to get on this chicken coop man! i want that stuff all year long!