Poached saddle of venison with vegetables and chickweed

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Ingredients

For the meat

  • 800 g saddle of venison (off the bone)
  • 250 ml dry white wine
  • 125 ml Noilly Prat
  • 125 ml venison stock
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 tsp. peppercorns
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 4 allspice grains
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 3 cloves
  • 1 handful of deadnettle (Lamium) leaves and flowers

For the vegetables and sauce

  • 1 leek
  • 250 ml vegetable stock
  • 100 g red organic lentils
  • 5 tbs. cream
  • 2 tsp. hot mustard
  • 150 g butter (ice cold)
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • lemon juice to taste
  • 1 pinch of sugar
  • 1 handful of chickweed (Stellaria media)

Preparation

Peel garlic cloves, wash deadnettles and shake dry. Pour white wine and Noilly Prat into a pot and reduce by half. Add venison stock, spices and herbs and simmer for about 5 minutes. Trim the venison cleanly and cut into 4 equal pieces. Remove pot from heat and wait until temperature reaches approx. 80 °C. Place saddle of venison in the broth and let poach for 10–15 min.

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For the vegetables, wash and dry the leeks and cut them into fine rings. Heat the butter in a saucepan and lightly sauté the leeks in it. Deglaze with vegetable stock, add the lentils and cook for about 10 minutes. Then add cream and mustard and bring to a boil briefly. Season to taste with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and sugar.

Remove some of the meat stock (about 100 ml), pass through a sieve and stir in the ice–cold butter cut into flakes. Whisk the sauce until frothy. Finely chop chickweed and sprinkle it over the lentils. Remove meat from broth, slice it, and arrange with lentils. Spoon the frothy sauce over the meat and lentils.

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– Good to know –
Chickweed is a real all–rounder. It has a delicious mild flavor that resembles raw corn, and it’s much more nutritious than leaf lettuce.

About

Ilka Dorn

Ilka Dorn lives with her family on an old farm on the Lower Rhine area and has been the owner of an advertising agency for more than 20 years. In her free time, the mother of two sons loves to cook for her family, friends and guests, with a particular fondness for preparing the venison of game hunted in her local hunting grounds. She discovered her passion for hunting more than 30 years ago. Her knowledge of wild herbs, mushrooms and all the other treasures of nature was taught by her grandmother and her mother at an early age.

For Ilka Dorn, hunting is both a privilege and a craft, which she carries out with great respect for nature and for the game. For her, hunting today represents the fairest and most justifiable way to obtain meat as food. When she is out hunting she relies on high-quality optics from Leica – whether hunting by day or night.

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