Food Wine Sleep

Air dried venison or other game meat is considered a specialty throughout winter in many European countries. In order to preserve the meat gained during the short hunting season, for usage throughout the winter, drying, curing and salting are popular methods. This dish combines the air-dried venison meat with a mild feta-olive salad and makes a delicate appetizer for any day during the cold winter.

This is great example of a recipe that is healthy, easy, quick and yet still a very comforting winter dish. When I make this I rarely have it with anything more than a bottle of Pinot Noir and some ciabatta bread. Actually I lie, a few weeks ago I made it for a lunch and simply added arugula leaves, a little more vinegar, a splash of olive oil and served it with white wine.

This recipe is a staple in many kitchens and really an old way of preserving the freshly caught fish. It is all based on the marriage of salt and sugar, which will cure the salmon or any other fish for that matter, and therefore preserve it. In general you can not go wrong when applying a 2:1 ratio salt over sugar when curing any fish. The time of the curing process although is quite essential and depends very much on the thickness of the fish fillet to be cured. Smoked salmon, especially from farmed salmon, is often quite fatty, but curing the salmon fillet removes a lot of the fatty structures in the meat and the resulting cured salmon is leaner, easier to cut and a del...

Reduced Balsamic is one of those incredibly simple items to prepare, it is simply Balsamic Vinegar that has been thickened by way of evaporation over heat. This is a great ingredient to have on hand in any kitchen. It's sweet yet slightly tart flavour not only is the perfect complement to many dishes but makes a very visually appealing garnish. Try it over grilled vegetables or salads and even on some desserts. When preparing this item I would not recommend you use your best and most expensive Balsamic vinegar as you will lose about 2/3rds to evaporation, however I would also avoid using a very cheap and acidic variety, as no matter how much you reduce these; they remain...

This dish builds on a recipe my friend Damian gave to me a couple of years back. I was working with him on a function for the annual Melbourne Cup horse race. We had had some problems with suppliers not delivering on time and as such were behind the eight ball with our prep all morning. It was now 12 noon and I recall nervously saying to Damo, "Here come the customers and we haven't even got half the prep done, I've still got to cook the cous cous, I haven't even got the chicken kievs let alone stuff them." Damian calmly replied "Pass me that orange juice. I'll make the cous cous and you run across the road to the Thai restaurant and tell them you'll buy so...

I have had venison on 3 different continents and on each occasion it has tasted completely different from the last. Wow!! Does that ever sound pompous; when you write that word "Venison" it can't help but be read that way, just pretend I said chicken and I won't come across as a snob. Anyhow apart from the obvious reasons for these differences such as whether the meat is farmed or wild, there are many other reasons. For example, the climate the animal lives in, the age of the animal and even the geography it lives in. For example a very hilly and sparsely vegetated landscape will produce a very different animal to one that has grown up in a fertile well vege...