Wednesday 16 November 2011

Things not commonly found in UK or Irish supermarkets, part II: cerf/venison


In the latest installment of what to do with the unusual foodstuffs you find in Belgian supermarkets, this week I made cerf, aka deer, venison or, if you don’t want to put too fine a point on it, Bambi’s dad.

I’ve to apologise in advance, as I truly have no photo’s of this, not even bad ones, but frankly, you’re not missing much.

I didn’t realise there is a difference between female and male venison, but there is. The packet was labelled “cerf”, which is the male deer, while doe (as you will all remember from the Sound of Music is the female deer) would be labelled “biche”.

I pan fried the steaks for about 7 minutes on each side, adding a bit of pepper and salt towards the end. The result was rather disappointing. The meat was a bit dry and tough. The taste tended towards (dare I say it) liver – it had that pang of iron off it that I find really disagreeable. A quick search shows that venison is much higher in iron than beef, so this is to be expected.

Oh well, lesson learned. A good effort, but I wouldn’t cook cerf again. If I see biche though, I will try it. 

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