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We had an election yesterday, but I had to write this
before any returns came in, so we have to deal with
something significant today. This is deer season, and many
of you wonder how you'll cope with a successful game
harvest.
The first rule of serving venison to diners who will gratefully savor it is to find some starving mongrels.
Failing that, you can develop an entertaining patter to present during dinner, when you invite people over to help you get rid of that freezer full of wild meat.
As your guests poke at their chops and struggle to avoid
making disgusting faces, you provide details. Sorry it
tastes a little gamy. See, I had this clean head shot
almost lined up, and then something spooked the critter. I
snapped off one quick round, hit him in the rump, and he
took off like he owed me money. Had to track him about four
miles, and he'd been dead for just a little while by the
time I found him next afternoon.
If you don't think your conversational skills are up to this demanding level of palaver, you can use one of the many recipes guaranteed to make venison edible. Everybody has one -- this delicious recipe comes from a friend who used to live next door to us:
CHILI VERDE CON VENADO
Take one pound or less of venison, slice thinly. Marinate for at least two days in mixture of soy sauce, cheap wine, molasses, olive oil, Tobasco sauce, pepper and garlic.
In large cooking pot, combine meat with one peck of roasted and peeled Pueblo Hots (an energetic chili pepper available only in the better parts of Colorado) and one bushel of roasted and peeled Anaheims. Add ten pounds chopped onion and several handfuls of shredded garlic.
Cook until thick, or cheat and thicken with flour or corn starch. Serve with cheese, warm tortillas and refried beans.
No matter how much my husband mangles a deer,
she
said, this recipe never fails. Nobody ever complains
that the venison takes gamy. In fact, nobody has ever even
mentioned that there's venison in the chili. It's the best
venison recipe I've ever seen.
I've had it, and I agree. But you may have noticed that it takes a lot of spicing to make venison palatable, and therein lies some history.
Venison was a common meat in 15th-century Europe, which explains why spices were in great demand then. The demand was so great that the Queen of Spain was willing to do anything to get more pepper to put on her venison -- even bankroll a hare-brained Italian mariner who thought he knew a shortcut to India, the source of spices at the time.
Thus was America discovered, only because there wasn't any other way to make venison fit to eat.
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