Roasted Rack of Venison with Port and Red Currant Sauce Recipe (Venison with Cumberland Sauce)

Roasted Rack of Venison with Port and Red Currant Sauce

From Chronicle Books' Lobel's Meat and Wine

Roasted Rack of Venison with Port and Red Currant Sauce

Ingredients:

1 small lemon, washed
1 small orange, washed
3/4 cup good-quality Port
1 1/2 tablespoons minced shallot
5 tablespoons red currant preserves or jelly
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
Kosher salt
Two 4-rib racks of venison or one 8-rib rack, halved (about 2 1/2 pounds), frenched, and trimmed of all fat and silver skin
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, halved
6 sprigs fresh thyme
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
3 tablespoons Beef Stock or canned low-sodium beef broth

Serves 4

This and many other wonderful
recipes may be found in
Lobel's Meat and Wine
from Chronicle Books

This is a classic from England, where the autumn hunt has always been taken very seriously. Nowadays, unless you hunt, most of us eat farm-raised venison, which is not as gamy as some might expect yet still retains a pleasing, full flavor and tends to be nice and lean. Though it is traditionally served as a cold sauce alongside cold meat, our adaptation of Cumberland sauce is served hot with chops from a simple, elegant roasted rack of venison. This dish is great for entertaining; an eight-rib rack serves four perfectly. The goal with the lemon and orange zest is to cut matchsticks that will provide texture and flavor to the finished sauce. Use a small knife, vegetable peeler, or a specially designed citrus zester. In winter, serve the venison chops with blanched Brussels sprouts sautéed in butter and finished with bacon. In the summertime, the chops are delicious with buttered string and wax beans.
Butcher's Note: Because racks of any animal are, by nature, lopsided, you have to be a bit crafty in order to brown them thoroughly. As they cook, lean the racks against the sides of the skillet or against one another to help you brown those areas that resist contact with the bottom of the pan. If you don't own a pair of kitchen tongs, here's a perfect excuse to buy some; you will find them one of the most useful utensils in the kitchen. As with all racks, start browning with the meaty side down and then work around the circumference of the rack until nicely browned (a rack really has three or four "surfaces"). When you get to the side of the rack that exposes the cut-off rib bones, brown for a few minutes less than others and then put the skillet in the oven to roast (with this side still facing down). In this way, this less-browned side will continue browning as the meat finishes cooking in the oven.
Wine Note: With a classic British dish before us, we were, for the first time in this book, without a regional wine tradition to frame our tasting. So, when selecting wines to sample with our venison and Cumberland sauce, we behaved as a nineteenth-century British aristocrat might have: On our table was a selection of top-flight red Bordeaux and Burgundy. This fantasy, it turned out, was a mistake.

Because farm-raised venison is really quite lean and mild, to our taste, it's best enjoyed with wines that don't overpower it. Nevertheless, it goes just fine with big, "important" Bordeaux and Burgundy... when the meat is all by itself. The problem at our table was the sauce. This delicious, fruitysweet Port and red currant sauce really knocks the stuffing out of most wines. After a number of tries, we knew we needed fruity, fairly full-bodied, and decidedly food-friendly wine. To us that means a bigger-boned California or Oregon Pinot Noir. One favorite is St. Innocent Pinot Noir 'Villages Cuvée" from the Willamette Valley. Long after the tasting, we had another thought. We realized that the best companion to this dish and that pesky sauce might be an altogether different wine, so we returned and tried another historical British favorite, a white. This top-flight German Riesling knocked the ball out of the park. The wine? The Robert Weil Kiedrich Grafenberg Riesling Spatlese from the Rheingau.

1. Using a vegetable peeler or small, sharp knife, remove the colored part, or zest, of all the lemon and half the orange skins, working in strips from top to bottom and taking care not to include the white pith underneath (if some pith remains attached, cut it away with a paring knife). Cut the zest lengthwise into the thinnest possible matchsticks. Put in a small metal sieve.

2. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Submerge the zest in the sieve in the water for 1 minute. Remove and rinse under cool running water. Repeat twice more. Pat the zest dry and set aside.

3. Cut and squeeze the lemon to yield 1 tablespoon of juice. Cut and squeeze the orange to yield 6 tablespoons of juice. Set the juice aside.

4. In a small sauté pan, bring the Port and shallot to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add the red currant preserves, ginger, mustard, and a pinch of salt, whisking until the preserves begin to bubble. Add the citrus zests and whisk in the citrus juices. Simmer over low heat until the sauce thickens a bit and is lightly syrupy, 5 to 6 minutes longer. Remove from the heat and set aside.

5. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

6. Blot the venison dry and generously salt all over. In a large ovenproof skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat until very hot. Cook the venison racks, turning them with tongs, until deeply browned around their circumference, 8 to 10 minutes (see Butcher's Note).

7. Transfer the skillet to the oven and roast to the desired doneness, 15 to 18 minutes for medium-rare, or when an instant-read thermometer registers 125°F After 12 minutes, carefully transfer the skillet to the stove top and add the garlic, thyme sprigs, and 4 tablespoons of the butter, tilting the pan to let the ingredients mingle. Baste the meat with the butter for 30 seconds. Turn the racks over, baste again, and return to the oven to finish roasting. When done, baste the meat once more and transferthe venison to a cutting board.Tent loosely with aluminum foil and let rest for 5 minutes.

8. Return the sauce to a simmer and whisk in the stock and the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Remove from the heat and keep warm on the stove top (it will thicken a bit as it cools).

9. Cut the venison into 8 equal chops. Place 2 chops attractively on each serving plate, spoon the sauce over each, and serve.

Make-Ahead Tip: The sauce can be made up to 6 hours ahead and refrigerated or kept at room temperature. Thin with stock or water as necessary.