Black Garlic-Marinated Haunch of Venison, Creamed Black Cabbage with Toasted Pine Nuts, Black Cherry and Red Wine Sauce and Roasted Wild Mushrooms
The concept of combining black garlic with black cherry and black cabbage came to me in a lucid dream during a nap one afternoon. Bizarrely I was dreaming about food. My subconscious had already put some of the ingredients there at the start of the dream but my conscious mind began to formulate the dish and that’s where the trio of black ingredients came in. The flavour combinations really work and I urge you try this. As always, the quality of flavour is in the ingredients – superb venison from the Cairngorms, dry-aged for 21 days, supplied by the great guys at Farmison. The black cherry sauce would also go equally well with duck. I made my own game stock for the sauce. It’s ok to substitute it for chicken stock if all else fails, but of course the sauce won’t have quite the same depth of flavour.
Serves 4.
Ingredients:
For the black garlic venison:
4 x 200g 21-day dry-aged venison haunch steaks
16 cloves of Balsajo black garlic
1 tbsp light rapeseed oil
2 tsp Maldon sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
For the black cherry and red wine sauce:
12 pitted black cherries
50g caster sugar
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
400ml game stock
175ml red wine
1 tsp redcurrant jelly
1 sprig of thyme
For the creamed black cabbage:
cavolo nero, stems removed and thinly sliced
300ml double cream
150ml low-salt organic chicken stock
50g Mrs. Kirkham’s Smoked Lancashire Cheese
a small handful of pine nuts, toasted
For the roasted wild mushrooms:
250g wild mushrooms
25g Grandma Singleton’s Whey Cream Butter
2 tbsp walnut oil
3 sprigs of lemon thyme, leaves picked
Maldon sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
Method:
To prepare the venison:
1. Using a pestle and mortar, crush the black garlic cloves with the sea salt to a paste then mix with light rapeseed oil and freshly ground black pepper.
2. Coat the venison haunch steaks equally with the black paste making sure each steak is evenly coated.
3. Put the steaks in a glass or ceramic bowl covered with cling film or in a sealed plastic container and marinate for at least four hours, preferably overnight.
4. Before you cook the venison, remove from the fridge and allow the meat to come to room temperature.
To make the sauce:
1. Place the sugar and red wine vinegar in a saucepan over a medium heat and simmer stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved and the liquid has evaporated.
2. Add the red wine, game stock, black cherries and sprig of thyme and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until reduced by half. Sieve through a chinois into a clean pan pressing the black cherries to extract their juices.
3. Bring the sauce to a boil and reduce by a third. Taste the sauce, if you think it needs to be sweeter, add a little more redcurrant jelly. The sauce should be of a pouring consistency. If it thickens too much whisk in a little boiling water to thin it down.
For the creamed black cabbage:
Put the chicken stock and cream in a medium saucepan over a medium/high heat and simmer until reduced by two-thirds. Add the grated cheese and stir into the sauce. Add the cavolo nero and cook until the sauce has thickened. Season to taste. Stir in half of the pine nuts and save the rest to garnish the dish.
To roast the wild mushrooms:
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Place a sheet of non-stick baking parchment on a roasting tray. Remove any dirt from the mushrooms using a brush then scatter them on top of the baking parchment. Dot the mushrooms with small pieces of the whey cream butter and drizzle with walnut oil. Scatter the lemon thyme leaves over the mushrooms then season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast for ten minutes.
To cook the venison:
Pan-fry the venison steaks for about four minutes, two minutes on each side in light rapeseed oil making sure each steak is evenly browned on all sides. Transfer the venison to a roasting tray and finish in the oven at 180°C for two minutes. Remove from the oven and let the meat rest for a few minutes before slicing into 1cm thick pieces.
To serve:
Place a bed of the creamed black cabbage on the middle of the plate, place slices of the venison on top of the cabbage surrounded by the roasted wild mushrooms. Drizzle some of the sauce around the plate and garnish with the remaining pine nuts.










