Stuff the detox — here’s some grub with beer

Here’s something different: venison with Kriek sauce and Trappist mushrooms

I live on Exmoor where the red deer roam and provide sustenance for the table. Beer and food is slow to take off here but one of my locals offers beer choices on its menu, while I’m going to be working with a couple of other chefs in the area on developing a beer dinner (as well as a beer vs wine event). Who knows this particular favourite might end up on the table — the Chimay-marinated meat is flash fried and then served with a robust sauce based on Liefman’s Cuvee-Brut Kriek alongside mushrooms that have been cooked in the reduced marinade. I usually accompany this dish with Abbey de Roc’s rich and bittersweet brune or with my old standby Orval, a beer that brings so much to the table. Here goes then, if you do decide to do the menu and it works, call me Delia.

Four venison haunch steaks, 6-8 oz each

330ml bottle of Chimay Red

Juniper berries

8oz of mushrooms (if you can get wild mushrooms all the better)

Several fat cloves of garlic

Seasoning

330ml bottle of Liefman’s Cuvee-Brut

3 oz of brown sugar

7 fl oz of chicken stock

One shallot

Butter/olive oil

Seasoning

Marinate haunches in Chimay Red for up to eight hours, along with two/three crushed juniper berries. Keep marinade and pat meat dry with kitchen towel, put to one side. Sprinkle potatoes and parsnips with sea salt and roll in extra virgin olive oil before putting into oven to roast. Give mushrooms a quick fry in butter (or olive oil) with chopped up garlic cloves and add Chimay marinade; boil until reduced. Check for seasoning.

Meanwhile make sauce. Chop shallot and fry in small pan until soft and translucent. Add rest of ingredients in small pan and boil until it thickens. Check for seasoning. This should take four/five minutes.

When everything feels close to readiness flash fry the venison on both sides (use either butter or olive oil depending on your predilection, butter adds a nice sense of unctuousness though the reward for such extravagance is 40 extra crunches in the gym). I like my venison near raw and tender, but you might like it as charred as Joan of Arc at the stake. Sprinkle with the tiniest amount of sea salt. Place on plate with potatoes, parsnips and mushrooms, spoon sauce on the meat, pour beer and eat and drink to your heart’s content.

PS Another good dish to aid digestion during this dark and dank month would be cassoulet with Toulouse sausages, duck confit, pork and haricot beans topped with breadcrumbs — with this dainty feast I think I would pair several bottles of Hardcore IPA.

This is nothing to do with the recipe, being a nice display of meat
in a Prague shop windo, especially relevant given the news from Ceske Budejovice yesterday

Beer gardens are heavenly

Beer gardens are just the most beautiful, sensual, relaxing, celebratory places to be when the sun shines and the beer in your glass is equally sunny. I sit outside the Exmoor Forest Inn in Simonsbath (the so-called capital of Exmoor — blink and you have driven through it) after completing my 16 miles on the annual Exmoor Perambulation (you can do either 16 or 31, I always plump for the former), a fantastic trawl through the glorious uplands of Exmoor where deep valleys cut through the heather and tough grass of the high moors. The sun is out, I have a pint of Budvar Draught in front of me, and contemplation has to give way to refreshment. It’s perfect though — funny to think that out here in the middle of nowhere a Czech lager is served with such joy and class. Pub gardens: last Sunday evening I was also out in the one that stands in front of the Crown at Churchill, an unspoilt, rustic, take-us-as-you-find-us place in the village of Churchill. The view was over towards Wales, while behind me the solid 19th century building was as still as a stopped clock. Beer and cider was dispensed: a pint of RCH was followed by a Thatcher’s cider (they make the stuff down the road). I was warned by the proprietor of the guest house I was staying in (early start for Bristol airport the next morning) that the Mendip Twister (I think) was lethal. At 9pm when a guest in the guest house shouted ‘wrong room’ as I tried to put my key into his door was sufficient evidence of a certain confusion.
The picture is of the Crown in Churchill, very Joy Division meets Edward Thomas if there is such a thing…