Venison and Celeriac Rosti
Or to give the recipe it’s full name, Chargrilled Venison Steaks with Redcurrant and Celeriac Rosti.
This is a delicious and indulgent recipe that I got off the inside of a packet of two venison steaks from Waitrose. When you’re a widow, you need the odd indulgent recipe for when you need cheering up. It’s also very simple to cook and well within the capability of a man who taught himself cooking at 60.
As with all of the recipes that I’ll post here, it will be gluten-free, as I’m a coeliac and can’t eat any of the gluten found in wheat, barley and rye.
This is recipe for two steaks.
- Season the venison steaks.
- Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan until it is very hot. Sear the venison steaks in the pan for 4-5 minutes on each side, or until cooked. Lift onto a plate and keep warm.
- Add the grated zest and juice of one orange, three tablespoons of redcurrant jelly (the proper stuff made from sugar!) and a tablespoon of port or brandy.
- Season lightly and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2-3 minutes or until sticky, then spoon over the venison.
- Heat through and serve with the rosti.
For the celeriac rosti.
- Preheat the oven to 190 Degrees Centigrade (Is there anything else?). Or with me use the bottom of the top oven in the AGA.
- Peel and coarsely grate 200 grams of celeriac then place in a bowl with 50 grams of melted butter, half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and seasoning.
- Pile the mixture into some tins brushed with melted butter and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
Before I ate this, I had never eaten celeriac. I now use it as an alternative to potatoes.
Why Anonymous?
That’s how you feel at times.
You get ignored, not asked out to dinner and other parties, spend a lot of time by yourself and generally have to make your own entertainment.
Just try it for a bit!
Romanians in Belfast
Over the last few days there have been a lot of attacks on Romanians in Belfast. Racist? Of course they are.
But then Northern Ireland they know all about racism and sectarianism! It may have been pushed under the surface between Catholics and Protestants, but it does appear to have come out again, where these Romanians are concerned.
Here’s a report from the BBC explaining the backround.
I get very heated about racism and immigrants being treated very badly.
Read Robert Winder’s excellent book Bloody Foreigners and there is a piece about poor Jews and Germans coming to work in the fur trade in the East End of London.
An 1854 police report estimated that there were two thousand destitute Germans in what Alexander Herzen called ‘the miry bottom’ of London. Von Meysenburg wrote, ‘Poor German families there are by the hundreds. The work is stamping raw pelts at a German fur factory, Imagine a big barrel in a very warm room, filled to the very top with ermine and sable skins. A man climbs into the barrel stark naked and stamps and works with his hands and feet from morning until night.
That could well have been my father’s antecendents, as they are down in the census as fur skin dressers and they lived in the poorest parts of the East End.
Winder’s book also contains a whole chapter on Huguenots. My mother’s family are all descended from these religious refugees from France.
So when I hear stories like this from Belfast, I reach for my disgust hooter. And use it.
The Anonymous Widower 