Adventures in Christmas dinner

I cooked elk for Christmas day.

This is certainly not a traditional Christmas dinner, that would be turkey or glazed ham. But I am ambivalent about turkey, and the photographer is not really fond of it, unless it is hidden in a stew or stir fry of some kind. So why would I expend all that effort for that?

Christmas was very tradition driven in his family. Fish soup and then fried fish and homemade pasta on Christmas eve. Wine-and-egg-yolk soup and then roast suckling pig with roast potatoes and green salad on Christmas day. His mother started baking in late November, and produced regularly 20 to 25 different varieties of tiny cookies, poppy seed and walnut roll, and about a dozen mini Christmas breads ("stollen"). Wonderful Austro-Hungarian inspired stuff. These sweets were served for dessert and when company came over. Buying suckling pig for Christmas involved purchasing a whole pig usually with other people, and then still freezing significant amounts of meat for later occasions. And the problem is, I am just not fond of it.Far too greasy, and lacking in flavour aside from the crispy skin.

In my family, my father, the occasional hobby chef, planned and cooked the Christmas meals, and it was highly unlikely that we would be eating any dish that he'd made before. Over the years we ate deer, boar, lamb, hare, and a bunch of others I've forgotten. Once we relocated to this continent, goose and turkey were also tried. He made pâté and always tripled the amount of garlic the recipe called for. And he used to marinate game meat to within an inch of its life, making it invariably very tender but also a little dry. Dessert always played a very minor role in the meal, and was followed by a cheese, nuts and grapes course.  Dinner was long, buttons were undone!

I've cooked turkey in the past, and we've also had duck, leg of lamb, roast beef and Cornish hen. Last year I cooked Beef Wellington, and the result was pretty good. I was in a more adventurous mood this year. A few years ago I looked at Bearbrook Farm for boar meat, but the price scared me off. A small roast, six by four inches big cost $80. I bought a pheasant instead, and changed the menu.

This year I decided to check out the Elk Ranch. I spent some time looking at the website, reading the information on the meat and how to cook it. I chose a tenderloin recipe for the main meal (with yukon gold hash, the first recipe I looked at seemed the tastiest.) I did not find any prices on the website, so I was prepared to make last minute changes, but I was pleasantly surprised. While the meat was certainly more expensive than beef, it was reasonably priced, and there was a good selection of (frozen) pieces, so I was able to get the approximate weight I wanted.

This was my first real adventure cooking "serious" game. The meat definitely had a different colour and texture when handling it, and when I seared an then roasted it, the fats and juices had a distinct (unfamiliar but not unpleasant) smell. A friend would now tell me that this is likely due to the animal eating some cedar and herbs in the summer and fall. My sauce refused to thicken, but lacked nothing in flavour.  The meat was tender, moist and delicious, and the potato hash went very well with it.

We had picked out a bottle of Zenato Ripassa Valpolicella to go with this. We heard a salesperson in the liquor store refer to it as his go-to wine to recommend with game meats, and it was indeed a very good combination. To start it off I made a curried beet soup, served warm with sour cream and chives. Those winter vegetables still got a spot at the table I guess.

Now we just have to worry if Santa will stop here again next year. Elk (wapiti) is awfully close to caribou (reindeer).  We may be blacklisted!

Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.