Venison Bourguignon with Roasted Root Vegetables

You'll be happy to know that this doe did not make it into the stew pot.


But another one did!

Dave brought home a beautiful mule deer doe from the Peace River country up near Chetwynd this fall, and she's been very tasty. I know, many people will be deeply offended by that statement. Too bad. Unless they are die-hard vegans who live what they preach, then I'm afraid I don't have a lot of sympathy for anyone who eats store-purchased meat in this day and age that thinks that hunting is cruel. Anyway, I digress. This is our second deer and this one got hung for a few days before being butchered into meat packages, and what an incredible difference! This doe is so darned tender, it's mouth-wateringly good.

So dinner for last night & tonight was prepared as follows:

approximately 1 lb of cubed venison stew, silver skin removed
2 tbsp bacon fat (well, you could use oil, but bacon fat is just so much tastier!)
1 can dark beer (in our case, Canterbury)
4 large brown (crimini) mushrooms, coarsely sliced
scant 1/4 cup flour (possibly less, depending on how much liquid there is left after cooking)

Melt bacon fat, then brown meat all around at medium high heat to seal, but not cook. Pour in beer and add mushrooms, turn down heat to minimum or low, and let whole thing simmer for a minimum of 1/2 hour, but can be longer. When getting ready to serve, turn up heat a bit and add in flour to thicken.

For roasted veggies:

1 large sweet potato (orange root vegetable, not yellow fleshed yam)
1-2 medium rutabaga (from our garden)
4-6 medium potatoes (we used Russian blue and French fingerling from our garden)
a generous sprinkling of salt (Brittany grey)
1 tbsp crumbled dry oregano

Chop the veggies up into coarse chips (fries) shape, spray pan & veggies liberally with grape seed oil (if you don't have oil atomizer, you can mix salt & herbs with a couple of tbsp of oil then dribble over veggies). Roast at around 350°F for at least an hour, turning regularly, until fairly crisp and baked on the outside.

Serve with the stew & gravy ladled out over the veggies, and maybe with a pint on the side. Mmmm!