Chef Graham Brown
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We welcomed Graham Brown, Executive Chef of Deer Industry New Zealand to present a masterclass on cooking with venison to our Level 3 and 4 cookery students.
New Zealand deer is the European red deer, which arrived with British settlers in the early 20th century, for recreational game hunting. Today, deer is farmed for premium meat and exported to many countries however in the wild, deer, along with wild pigs and goats are a growing threat to native ecosystems and established farms.
Chef Graham explained that wild deer will eat bark, wild lichen, which changes the flavour of the meat plus for a hunter in the wild, it is hard to tell the age of a deer and to know whether the animal is prime or too old. With farmed venison, the deer eat grass and are managed in a way to ensure that the meat is lean and tender when the animal is killed at around 12 months of age.
Using the cut known as the Denver Leg, Chef Graham demonstrated how to trim this into a variety of shapes for fast and easing sauteing to medium rare. As he trimmed the meat into evenly shaped fillet cuts, he removed any silverskin.
The dishes Chef Graham prepared showcased a number of techniques.
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Dish 1 Salad of Merchant of Venison Red berry-tea smoked venison – roasted beets, blood orange, local walnuts
This was a salad with venison that had been cured and smoked by Merchant of Venison in Christchurch. To this Chef Graham added a selection of vegetables and raspberry vinegar dressing.
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Dish 2 Oven-baked Braised short ribs, Yakiniku Sauce, Sesame seeds, salted cucumber
In this dish, Chef Graham brought short ribs that were previously cooked, cut them, and baked the ribs off with a Yakiniku Sauce of soy, mirin, ginger.
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Dish 3 Ragout of slow braised brisket Ashley Forest porcini, tomatoes, gnocchi
The brisket for this dish had been braised for over 4 hours and was placed into a ragout of porcini mushrooms that Chef Graham had foraged near his home, tomato and served with gnocchi.
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Dish 4 Flat iron with spring vegetables of aubergine, courgettes, carrots, Spring salsa
This dish consisted part of the fresh Denver leg that was trimmed to be very thin. Graham described that as “like filleting a fish” to remove the silver skin. It was then cooked on a hot grill plate for 2 minutes on each side and served with spring vegetables.
Note about deer in New Zealand
Purebred wapiti (Cervus elaphus nelson) from the United States’ Yellowstone National Park were gifted to New Zealand by President Theodore Roosevelt and released in George Sound, Fiordland, in 1905. They were introduced to Fiordland for the pleasure of game animal trophy hunting by early settlers. Around the same time, red deer (Cervus elaphus scoticus) were also introduced for sport and recreation.
Read more here.
