Hunter's reward - venison tenderloin

We have a lot of deer in New Zealand, and they're considered an invasive pest, so they are hunted a lot. When I go hunting with my mates we normally agree to split the meat evenly amoungst us, with one exception - the shooter always gets the tenderloins, or as the guy who taught me to butcher calls them, the salmon fillets. Here is my favourite thing to do with them:

Pan seared venison tenderloin with blackcurrent and red wine sauce
serves three, depending on size of the animal of course.

1 whole venison tenderloin, fat trimmed off
a small handful of Rosemary, leaves only
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced fine
2 cups of bold red wine
a good big handfull of fresh blackcurrents (frozen if you have to)
a tablespoon of spicey plum chutney (my mother makes it every year, I'll try to get the recipe!)
olive oil
sea salt and cracked black pepper

This is best started in the morning to give time to marinate. mix a cup of red wine, the garlic, plum chutney, a few lashings of olive oil and plenty of cracked black pepper, and marinate the tenderloin for a good few hours, 8+ if you can manage it. I do this in a ziplock bag, to reduce mess and save me from having to turn the meat round in a dish or whatever. when you're ready to cook, scrape the marinade off and reserve. again, easy in a zip lock bag, you can just grip the meat through the bag and pull it out, scraping the marinade off as you do.

In a mortar, bruise the rosemary with some sea salt and plenty of cracked pepper, then with the help of a bit more olive oil, rub the rosemarry / salt / pepper into the meat.

This is a good moment to drink the other glass of wine.

heat up a nice cast iron pan, or even better, well used BBQ plate (disclaimer - kiwis don't refer to the same thing as americans with the word bbq), to a good searing temperature, and sear the rubbed meat on all sides, about 7 minutes for a good medium. then wrap the meat in tin foil and place back on the warm pan / plate, but off the heat. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, heat up the reserved marinade, and simmer gently while the meat cooks / rests. you should aim to reduce it by half. when the meat has had a good rest (around 4 minutes, longer for a larger animal), add the black currents to the simmering sauce. Slice the meat into 1cm slices, and add the resting juices to the sauce. arange the slices on the plates and drizzle over the sauce, which should be quite chunky from the berries. serve with a light green salad and plenty of that red wine

Interesting variation - Jamie oliver has a blueberry and juniper recipe similar to this. I prefer the black currents to the blueberries, but the addition of juniper is interesting and unique.

Kiwi

That sounds terrific Kiwi.....no I'm going to have to go kill something LOL

Um I've never measured and I'm not to flash with pounds anyway. We get all sorts of deer, all pests  some dropkick thought it would be a good idea to introduce way back in the day. Most common would probably be the red deer I guess, but there are lots of sika deer in parts of the north island, and lots of other types around the place as well. I guess as far as 'prize' deer go, the best would be the wapiti, down the bottom of the south island. I'm not in it for the trophey though so I generally try to shoot yearlings and spikers etc, normally getting about 55kg of meat off one.  There areother interesting things to shoot and eat aside from deer. lots of austrian chamois, which aregreat but small, and himalayan thar, which are even smaller and probably the tastiest meat I've ever had. They're pretty hard work though, you need to be a pretty good mountaineer and very fit to hunt them.

Sorry I can't give you more precise weights and so forth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_in_New_Zealand

Kiwi
PS sorry for the late reply, been moving house.