A Wild Recipe for Special Occasions

Guest Blogger: Renata Toth Around Christmas, everybody is busy with cooking and baking. I usually spend more time in the kitchen than out, cooking for family. Although we have a few classic meals we like to prepare, from time to time it feels good to bring a little adventure to Holiday cooking and try something new. The wonderful piece of tender deer meat offered recently by a family friend was an exciting choice to change the traditional and well-known line of Christmas meals. Being my first time of preparing venison, I was thankfully wise enough not to chose the most difficult recipe and go for a delicate, exciting, but not very complicated dish, and still make it a powerful pre-Christmas main course. The quick preparation time also adds to the attractiveness of this recipe in the overcharged Christmas period, filled with cooking and shopping and cleaning and cooking again. Ingredients for 4: 4 bigger but thin slices or venison (or 8 small ones) salt and nutmeg (or use spice mix) 1 egg 40 gr flour 50 gr cleaned and sliced natural (not salted) almonds 200 gr sour cherry 30 gr butter 3 cl cognac Preparation: spice the meat mix flour and almonds beat the egg cover the meat in egg, then the flour and almond mix, and fry in hot oil for 5 minutes on both sides. melt the butter and boil the cherries in the butter for around 10 minutes, or until the sauce mostly disappears. add the cognac to the cherry, and light it. It should burn down in a few seconds. Serve hot. as side dish, prepare rice, mashed potatoes, oven-baked potatoes, or croquettes. The combination of deer, cherry and cognac gives a wonderfully warm, wintery and forest-like impression which is the best with potato croquettes that increase this feeling. Accompanied by a beautiful advent wreath as a classy centrepiece on the dining table, especially with cinnamon and orange scented candles and decorated by dried orange slices and nut shells, complete the cozy mood of a pre-Christmas dinner in family. For more great recipes get your copy of the Gourmand World Award Winning Book Series The Basic Art of Italian Cooking: Holidays & Special Occasions=2nd edition