All posts by rmartin

Easy Awesome Venison

An easy recipe to fry up some venison steaks and make a little sauce.

  • Fry the steaks (about 1-2cm thick) in a generous amount of butter. Do not overcook! It only takes a couple of minutes on each side, you can see the blood come up. Medium high heat.
  • Take the steaks out and set aside. There should be quite a bit of liquid in the pan.
  • Add about the same amount of red wine as there was liquid, let it reduce.
  • Add some milk (a little less than the red wine)
  • Let it reduce to a nice consistency, and serve right away!

This goes well with some roasted sweet potatoes. Dice them up, sprinkle some salt and pepper, a little olive oil and about 35min at 400F.

Swiss Fruit Pie

Pie crust:

  • 100g sugar
  • 100g softened butter (room temperature)
  • 200g flour
  • 1 egg

Mix all until it barely holds together. Don’t over knead. Make into a flattened ball and wrap in seran wrap. Place in freezer for >20min.

Turn oven on to 350F (180C).

Butter a pie dish and flatten dough into it with fingers. Sprinkle some almond meal to keep dough from from getting soggy. Lay fruit inside. Can go in the oven as is, or one can add the following egg custard along with the fruit:

  • 2 Tbsp of sugar
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 Tsp of vanilla extract
  • 1Tsp of corn starch (or flour), mixed into the cream
  • 2 dl of cream

Cook in oven for 45min. Let cool.

Meat burgers

Tried this with kangaroo meat, was great! Makes 4 burgers…

  • 1 lb of ground meat (leaner meat so that burgers don’t shrink)
  • ~1-2 tbsp of chopped onion
  • 1 tsp of minced garlic
  • salt, pepper
  • paprika (used smoked paprika)
  • chile powder (used New Mexico chile powder)
  • cayenne pepper
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2-1 cup of bread crumbs

Mix it all together, start with 1/2 cup of bread crumbs and add more so that the consistency is right.

Chile con carne

  • 1 lb of non lean ground beef
  • 1 big onion
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 2 poblano peppers (substitute 1 green pepper)
  • 3-4 jalapenos (reserve 1 or 2 for serving)
  • 1-4 habaneros (depending on heat)
  • 1 quart mushrooms
  • Paprika as needed
  • Cumin as needed
  • salt, pepper
  • New Mexico Chili powder as needed
  • 1 can of diced tomatoes with juice
  • 1 can of cooked read kidney beans with juice
  • 1 small can of tomato paste
  • 1-2 cups of chicken broth/bouillon – add as needed
  • 2 chipotle peppers (whole)

Fry the meat, onions and peppers. Mix everything in except reserved jalapenos and simmer for at least 4 hours (6 is better, and it tastes better the next day). Use the spices to taste. Remember to remove the chipotles before serving (use them like a bay leaf). Make a corn bread to serve with it. Slice the remaining jalapenos to serve with the chili.

Mustard crusted beef roast (Easter 2013)

  • 3 lbs of beef roast, no bone
  • potatoes
  • carrots
  • 1 onion
  • 2 peppers
  • thyme, parsley, rosemary
  • ~1/2 cup mustard
  • olive oil
  • 2 tbsps of minced garlic
  1. Heat oven to 450F
  2. Cut veggies and potatoes, mix with some olive oil and herbs and line the bottom of the pan with them
  3. Mix herbs, garlic mustard, some olive oil (~2 tbsp). Rub this onto the meat
  4. Place meat on top of the veggies and place in oven
  5. After 10 min, lower temperature to 350F
  6. Cook for a total of 90min (80min after lowering temp)

Mai Tai Recipe

For 1 person

  • 1 shot of triple sec
  • 1 shot of white rum
  • 2  shots of pineapple juice (the kind with coconut in it is a nice twist)
  • 1/2 shot of lime juice
  • 1/2 shot of amaretto
  • 2 ice cubes
  • 1 shot of dark rum
  • 1 ice cube

Add these all in a glass, in that order. Inserting the ice cubes does all the mixing.

Fondue recipe

For 4-5 people (assume 200-250g cheese per person)Option 1:

  • 400g Gruyere (aged = better)
  • 400g Vacherin Fribourgeois (tough to find)

Option 2:

  • 400g Gruyere (young, easy to find)
  • 400g Gruyere (aged is better, otherwise Appenzeler cheese, otherwise young Gruyere)
  • 100g Emmentaler

The cheese should be grated, except for emmental and vacherin, which should be cut into small cubes.

1) Cut a garlic clove in 2 and rub exposed face all over the inside of the pot, you can chop it up after and leave it in the pot
2) Add dry white wine to pot (about 300ml for above cheese quantity). More wine makes it more runny, I’ve started to like it thicker, so you can play around with the quantity – 250ml-300ml should give a nice consistency though. Just with the amount of wine, you can almost double the number of people that you can serve (more runny and you can serve more people).
3) Add 1 level tablespoon of corn starch to the wine (pretty much independent of amount of cheese). Don’t put too much or it will taste starchy. You can also use flour, but it’s trickier to get the cheese well blended.

4) Add 1/4-1/2 small lemon’s juice (~1 tbsp)
5) Bring all this to a boil (on the stove top, not the heater on the table) and make sure the starch is well mixed in
6) If you brought to a boil on high, then turn it down to less high (medium)
7) Add the grated cheese, 1 handful at a time, at this point you have to stir continuously in figure 8 pattern with a wooden spoon (ideally, spoon has a hole in it). Make sure you keep stirring at all times, until served at the table, in figure 8, getting stuff off the bottom and keeping everything as uniform as possible. It’s all in the wrist.
8) After all the grated cheese is in and blended, add diced cheese. The whole cheese melting part should take about 10 minutes (in terms of what temperature you need)
9) Keep stirring until slightly bubbling and mixture is uniform (if it takes forever to get to a boil, then the heat should be higher)
10 Tell someone to light the heater on the table
11) Add 1 to 1.5 shots of Kirsch
12) Stir in the Kirsch (~1-2 minutes) and keep stirring until back to a slight boil
13) Sprinkle some pepper and nutmeg on top for decoration (not strictly necessary), bring to the table and make sure that people start stirring immediately with their breads. Minimize the amount of time where no stirring is going on.

Make sure that people keep stirring when they are dipping their bread

Adjust the temperature of the heater to maintain very slight bubbling of the fondue (more bubbling if people aren’t doing there job stirring with the bread).You need a bread with a good crust, usually a couple of baguettes will be enough for this quantity (I usually get a third just in case). I like to cut into 3/4″ thick slices and let people break up the bread into their own preferred size chunks (that way, it’s their fault if their piece falls in the pot).
If the cheese separates (it’s pretty obvious, you get a thick componenent on the bottom of the pot and almost just oil on the top layer), then you can try fixing it. Use another tablespoon (or less) of corn starch into a shotglass of kirsch, stir it well, then add it to the fondue and keep stirring; this should fix it… You probably need to do this on the stove with slightly more heat than the heater. It’s normal that near the end of eating the fondue you get a little bit of oil looking stuff on the top, about a tablespoon’s worth, nothing to worry about.