Venison Stew – Outlander

“Also a large boiling kettle, whose Acquisition we have Celebrated with a great quantity of tasty Stew, made with Venison, wild Onions from the wood, dried beans, and likewise some Tomatoe-fruits, dried from the Summer. None of us Died or suffered Ill-effects from Eating of the stew, so Claire is likely right, Tomatoes are not Poison.” -Drums of Autumn, by Diana Gabaldon

Venison Stew

Thoughts:

This post is from a guest swap I originally did with Outlander Kitchen. She cooked up a little Westerosi chowder, and I got to play with food from a terrific book series.

The finished stew is absolutely delicious. It’s thick, savory, and just unusual enough to be intriguing. The venison becomes mouthwateringly tender, while the dried tomatoes soften and soak up the broth. The roux magically enhances the stew, giving it a wonderfully rich consistency.

Rustic and hearty, it’s completely believable as a stew that Jamie, Claire, family, and tenants would enjoy on Fraser’s Ridge. A few herbs and vegetables from Claire’s garden, along with some dried beans and tomatoes, a bit of home brewed beer, and fresh venison that Jamie shot. I imagine that the broth would be made from the bones of the deer, since nothing is wasted

Like most stews, it’s better the second day, after the flavors have had time to meld together.

Venison Stew Recipe

Suggested pairings: spruce beer, bread and sweet butter, black currant jam, round of goat cheese, elderflower wine

1 1/2-2 lbs venison cut into 1 inch cubes
4 cloves garlic fine chopped
2 spring onions medium diced
2 carrots medium diced
1 cups dry kidney beans
1 cup sun dried tomatoes, cut into medium-small chunks
1 bottle of your favorite ale, red or brown (we used Celebrator Dopplebock)
3 cups venison or beef stock
1 large pinch rosemary or other savory herb, fine chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Splash of maple syrup
1 batch of roux ( 2 Tbs. each of butter and flour mixed together )

Combine the tomatoes and beans in a medium bowl and cover with 3 cups water. Allow to soak for at least an hour, and save the broth!

In a stock pot, heat 2 Tbs. bacon fat. Add meat, brown on both sides, remove from pot, and set aside. Add onions, garlic, and carrots to the stock pot with a splash of the tomato broth. Cook 5 minutes, covered. Deglaze pot with ale and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the browned venison, stock, beans, rosemary, tomatoes, splash of maple syrup, and the tomato broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer one hour OR until meat is tender. Bring back to a boil. In a separate pan, mix the butter and flour for your roux, and let it cook for about a minute, until golden. While whisking the roux, add a few ladles of the stew broth, which will thicken when it combines with the roux. Pour the thickened sauce back into the main pot. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy!

Olla Podrida – Don Quixote, 1655

Olla Podrida

Don Quixote – by Miguel de Cervantes – 1615

“‘That big dish that is smoking farther off,’ said Sancho, ‘seems to me to be an olla podrida, and out of the diversity of things in such ollas, I can’t fail to light upon something tasty and good for me.'”

Thoughts:

Olla Podrida is a kind of Spanish stew, the base of which is usually pork and beans, but can include any variety of additional ingredients. Although the exact meaning of the name is a matter of some dispute, a fairly safe translation might be “Hodgepodge”. Such a popular dish was it in the 17th and 18th centuries that it was not only mentioned in Samuel Pepys’ diary, but also in Robert Burns’ “Ode Tae a Haggis”. Quirky!

My recipe is from a Spanish reader of the blog, but I have taken the liberty of adding leek, and tweaking the seasoning to my own tastes. The resulting the broth is relatively light, but complex and hearty, although that seems like an impossible contradiction. The spiciness of the chorizo gives it a bite that is neither instant nor cumulative. In this way you can enjoy the full flavors of the broth, followed by a long pleasant heat.

The egg, called a tortilla in Spain, is the perfect accompaniment to the stew; not quite like an omelette as we know it, nor yet quite like a fritatta, the texture is hearty, yet somehow still fluffy and reasonably light. The small amount of chorizo mixed in with the other ingredients calls to the spicy sausage in the stew, and the pairing of the tortilla along with the blood sausage makes it a meal, rather than just soup.

Olla Podrida Recipe

Prep: 1 hour Cook Time: ~2 hours

Serves 6

Cook’s Note: The stew is served alongside the blood sausage and the egg tortilla. Be careful with the salt–the chorizos and the morcilla will salt the stew fair enough but better to taste it and correct.

Ingredients:

1 lb. red beans, soaked in water overnight
1 little pig’s trotter
1/5 lb. Salt Pork, rinsed
3 chorizos
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 leek, white part sliced thinly
salt to taste
1 blood sausage, preferably Burgos Morcilla
cumin and thyme to taste (optional)

For the egg tortilla:

3 eggs
a few springs parsley
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt and paprika to taste

Soak the beans in water overnight.

Add the soaked beans, water, and all remaining ingredients except the blood sausage and filling to a stock pot, and cover with a couple fingers’ width water. Cook over low heat for an hour and a half.

Take out the trotter and the chorizo; discard the trotter and grind one of the chorizos finely. Chopp the other two chorizo into rough chunks and add back into the stew. Be careful doing so, as the sausages will be hot!

In a separate pan, beat together the eggs and the other ingredients for the tortilla, adding the ground chorizo from the step above. Scramble all of this together, and cook in a fritatta pan; if you haven’t got a fritatta pan, you can improvise flipping the tortilla with a dinner plate placed over the omelette. Cut into 6 equal slices.

Slice the blood sausage and fry in olive oil. Set aside along with the tortilla. If you would like your stew thicker, make a roux by adding just under 2 Tbs. flour to 2 Tbs. oil over medium heat. Cook until the flour turns a pretty golden color. While whisking, add a ladelful of broth to the pan- this mixture will thicken almost immediately. Add more broth until the thick roux is pourable, at which point add it back into the stew.

Season to taste, adding cumin and thyme as desired. Serve hot with the tortilla and blood sausage on the side.

Enjoy!

Onion Broth w/bits of Goat and Carrot

“The stewards began to bring out the first dish, an onion broth flavored with bits of goat and carrot. Not precisely royal fare, but nourishing; it tasted good enough and warmed the belly. Owen the Oaf took up his fiddle, and several of the free folk joined in with pipes and drums. The same pipes and drums they played to sound Mance Rayder’s attack upon the Wall. Jon thought they sounded sweeter now. With the broth came loaves of coarse brown bread, warm from the oven. Salt and butter sat upon the tables.” -A Dance with Dragons

Onion Broth with Goat and Carrot

Our Thoughts:

Zounds!

This is the most flavorful, delicious, unique broth we’ve ever encountered. Rich and full, heavily tinged with the salt from the pork, with the underlying flavors of the herbs and onions. We wouldn’t have expected the combined mint and sage to be pleasing, but as usual, we were wonderfully rewarded by following the original recipe. On the whole, it’s a nice, nuanced combination of flavors for relatively little effort.

Consider pairing this broth with a loaf of our Black Beer Bread, but go light on the butter; you only have a bit left, and winter is coming…

Stewed Goat Recipe

Goat Kid or Mutton, with Thick Broth. Get kid or mutton and cut it into small pieces, and put it into a pot with salt pork; then get sage, mint and onion, and cook everything together; then get good spices and saffron, distemper them with the meat’s broth and let everything boil together until the meat falls apart; then lift the meat out into a dish with the thick broth. -The Neapolitan recipe collection, Italy, 15th c.

Ingredients:

1/4 lb. salt pork
6 cups water
1 cup dark beer or ale (drink the rest while you cook! ;) )
2 small sprigs sage
2 small sprigs mint
1 onion, roughly chopped
poudre forte (equal parts black pepper, cinnamon, mace, clove, long pepper, ginger, etc)
1 cup carrots, chopped small
1-2 Tbs. bacon fat or duck fat
ground goat meat, 1 lb.

Combine the salt pork, water, ale, herbs, and onions in a large pot. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Strain the broth into a clean pot, reserving the onions if you would like to add them back in. Season with a pinch of spices, and add the chopped carrots.

In a separate skillet, brown the goat meat in the fat, then add it to the broth pot. Let everything simmer together for 15 minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Skim some of the fat off the top if you like, then serve hot.

Prep: 15 minutes Cooking: 1 hour

Serves 5-6

Rich Beet Soup

Modern Beet Soup

“Sweet beets were grown in profusion hereabouts, and were served with almost every meal. The Volantenes made a cold soup of them, as thick and rich as purple honey.” -A Dance with Dragons

Thoughts:

The Roman recipe is the stranger of the two, and more rustic. The vegetables, especially the leeks, don’t quite puree completely down, giving the soup a hearty texture with an earthy taste.

The modern version is more familiar to many, as it’s basically a borscht. It’s simple, wholesome, hearty, with a lovely smooth texture. This soup showcases all the best aspects of root vegetables. yum.

The winner? The beauty alone of these soups make them worth a try. However, the wonderful earthiness of the Roman recipe can’t quite beat out the overall winning qualities of the modern dish. Some things just improve over time!

Recipes available in the Cookbook.

Sister’s Stew

“The beer was brown, the bread black, the stew a creamy white. She served it in a trencher hollowed out of a stale loaf. It was thick with leeks, carrots, barley, and turnips white and yellow, along with clams and chunks of cod and crabmeat, swimming in a stock of heavy cream and butter. It was the sort of stew that warmed a man right down to his bones, just the thing for a wet, cold night...”

-A Dance with Dragons

Sister’s Stew

Our Thoughts

Ohmygoodness. This stew is exactly as good as it sounds in the book. Where to even begin describing it?

The vegetables are wonderful, and add a welcome splash of color that is absent from many seafood chowders. Your brain will think the turnips are potatoes, and the sliced leeks separate in the mix such that every bite is bursting with both veg and fish. Despite the vast quantities of fish that went into the stew, it did not taste overly fishy. Instead, the seafood flavors melt into the creamy broth, mingling with the aromatic garlic and the very subtle hint of saffron.

We served ours in a loaf of black bread, which adds so many additional complex flavors that we found ourselves spooning up more and more to try and experience them all.

Definitely a keeper, and a must try recipe that’s now in the cookbook!!

Shrimp-and-Persimmon Soup

“She was breaking her fast on a bowl of cold shrimp-and-persimmon soup when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of ivory samite patterned with seed pearls.” (II:637)

Shrimp and Persimmon Soup

Our Thoughts:

This cold soup was a surprising mixture of flavors. An interesting choice for a breakfast, but once you think about it, a rather healthy one: fruit and protein. The combination of the persimmon and shrimp made us feel like we were dining in a Mediterranean seaport. Lime juice adds a lovely freshness to the soup, while the shallots create a decidedly savory flavor.

Although different from our normal fare, this soup is going in the personal cookbook. Also, the persimmon soup, sans shrimp, would be a wonderful base for a variety of other soups and stews, whether served hot or cold.

Get the Recipe!

Thick Stew of Mussels, Crabs, and 3 kinds of Fish

“The food was plain, but very good; there were loaves of crusty bread still warm from the ovens, crocks of fresh-churned butter, honey from the septry’s hives, and a thick stew of crabs, mussels, and at least three different kinds of fish. Septon Meribald and Ser Hyle drank the mead the brothers made, and pronounced it excellent, whilst she and Podrick contented themselves with more sweet cider.” -A Feast for Crows

Modern Fish Chowder

Thoughts

For this dish I opted for a hearty New England style fish chowder. I threw together a couple of different recipes, tweaked them to suit, and this is the incredibly tasty result!

One bite of this modern stew will make you forget the effort that went into creating it. This is the earthly realization of platonic fish chowder. We asked the guests at our dinner table to give their thoughts, but only received grunts of approval and moaned delight. Imagine yourself eating this meal in a tranquil sept on an island, savoring the hearty broth in peace while chaos rages around you. Imagine that, because eating this stew can transport you out of your everyday life.

Part of the challenge of food blogging is making the photos show just how delicious the dish is, and that’s often done with atmosphere. The building in the photo is a perfect stand-in for the Sept from the books. In reality, it’s a gutted and abandoned church near where my parents used to live, in West Boyleston, MA. I drove by the place once, and immediately knew I would have to use it for a photo. I must have been quite a sight as I made my way down the embankment, folding table, dishware, food, and camera all teetering precariously. But the photo made it all worth it, and I got a great picnic lunch, to boot!

Modern Fish Stew Recipe

Ingredients

1.5 oz salt pork or thick cut bacon, diced
1 lb potatoes (about 2 medium), chopped into 1/2″ cubes
1 yellow onion, finely diced
1.5 lb fish (we used salmon, haddock, and cod), about 2 fish or 4 fillets, cut into 1″ chunks
2 c water
1 cup heavy cream
12 oz can evaporated milk
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
~1/2-1 cup crab meat (imitation is fine, and cheaper!)
around a dozen mussels (ours were precooked)

Place 1/2 lb fish (about 1 fillet) in a pot with 2 c cold water. Bring to boil and boil 10 minutes.

While that is cooking, fry up the salt pork over medium heat. Once the bits are beginning to turn crispy and brown, add the diced potato. Cook 5 minutes over medium-high, stirring frequently. By now the fish broth should be done, so add it and the fish to the potato, then spread the remaining cubed fish atop this mess. Let this burble for about 10 minutes on medium-high.

At this point, if your pan won’t hold an additional 3 cups of liquid, transfer everything to a larger pot. Add heavy cream, evaporated milk, salt & pepper, crab meat, and whole mussels still in the shell. Bring to just under a boil, then reduce to medium-low, cover, and simmer about an hour.

To serve, ladle into bowls and garnish with additional pepper. To really round out the meal, serve it with the other original components from the book: crusty fresh bread with butter and honey, mead, and cider.

Cold Fruit Soup

“There were great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves, savory duck, peppered boar, goose, skewers of pigeon and capon, beef-and-barley stew, cold fruit soup.” -A Clash of Kings

Medieval Fruit Soup

Medieval Cold Fruit Soup

Our Thoughts:

On first taste, the medieval soup comes across with just a strong honey taste. The color tells one’s brain to expect a different flavor, a strawberry, perhaps, but once over that initial surprise, you can begin to really appreciate it for its own merits. With a little cinnamon on top, the soup reminded us of a candied apple, yet the almond milk lends it just a bit of exoticness.

This recipe, along with the modern version, is available in the Cookbook.

Cersei’s Creamy Chestnut Soup

“Cersei set a tasty table, that could not be denied. They started with a creamy chestnut soup, crusty hot bread, and greens dressed with apples and pine nuts.” (II: 565)

Modern Creamy Chestnut Soup

Our Thoughts:

Cersei knows her foods; this is a rich, creamy concoction of yummy goodness. The richness of the duck is balanced by the mildness of the lentils, while the chestnuts give it a slight sweet taste. The added elements- croutons, sauteed duck, cheese- provide a nice textural and flavorful counterpart to the thick bisque of the soup itself. Each bite tastes of luxury and the privilege that comes with being a Lannister of Casterly Rock.

The smoked duck is worth springing for, but we are now quite possibly addicted to it. Still, it makes for an absolutely mouthwatering soup that is the perfect cure for a cold, gloomy day.

Get the Recipe!

Leek Soup

“The wedding feast began with a thin leek soup, followed by a salad of green beans, onions, and beets…” -Storm of Swords

Medieval Leek Soup

Thoughts:

This was a simple, tasty recipe pairing.

The medieval leek soup took all of 5 minutes to prepare, and the result was an interesting, tasty broth with a bit of kick. The pepper and ginger lengthen the feeling of heat in your mouth, transitioning from the temperature of the hot soup to the warm sensation of the spices.

If you were a monk traveling the open road and cooking over campfires, the modern recipe would be your dinner of choice. The citrus flavor makes the soup wonderfully fresh-tasting, perfect for a spring evening with a chunk of sourdough bread. Leeks are a gem of a veg, underused in cooking these days.

Try both recipes and let us know your favorite- viva la leek!

Medieval Leek Soup

Take funges and pare hem clene and dyce hem; take leke and shrede hym small and do hym to seeþ in gode broth. Colour it with safroun, and do þerinne powdour fort. -Forme of Curye, ~1390

Ingredients:

1½ handfuls of mushrooms
6 threads saffron (or a pinch of ground saffron)
1 leek
¼ tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
2 c beef broth (or chicken broth)
¼ tsp salt

Wash the vegetables; slice the leek finely and dice the mushrooms. Add saffron to the broth and bring it to a boil. Add the leek, mushrooms, and powder fort to the broth, simmer 3-4 minutes, remove from the heat, and serve.We prefer to use beef broth, but it is also good with chicken.

Modern Leek Soup

Ingredients:

3 medium leeks
1 medium carrot
1 stalk celery
4 hand fulls spring greens
1 lemon
2 Tablespoons butter
1 litre vegetable stock
2 bay leaves

Trim the green end of the leeks to about 3 inches above the white, and cut root end. At root end, slice a cross to about halfway up the stalks, and rinse. Slice the leeks into thin rings. Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the leeks. Cover and simmer over a low heat until the leeks are softened, but not colored.

Chop the celery and carrot and add to the pan. Pour in vegetable stock, add bay leaves, salt, and pepper, and leave to simmer for 20 minutes or until veg is soft but sill vibrantly colored.

Rinse the spring greens and shred into thin ribbons.

Grate the lemon zest and drop into thepot with the shredded greens. Simmer for 2-3 minutes until the greens are just tender, juice the lemon into the soup and serve.

« Previous Page