I love foresty food. Anything that tastes and smells like the forest. Venison goes so well with those flavours, spices and aromas. I also like traditional Swedish food (“husmanskost”) and decided to make Swedish meatballs of ground venison. Traditionally there is bread crumbs mixed in, but since I live in a mostly gluten free household we don’t keep it around.

Here’s how you make it!

• 1 lbs ground venison
• 2 cooked potatoes
• 1 egg
• 1 shallot
• 1 tsp juniper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp rosemary
• a pinch of salt
• a pinch of white pepper

Start out by putting the ground venison in a big bowl. Then add all the dry spices. Chop up the shallot finely and add to the mix. Crush the juniper, I find it easiest to crush with the back of a knife. Rip the leaves off of the thyme and rosemary sprigs. Press the potatoes through a potato press, or mash them with a fork. Add the egg and mix the batter together until it looks like everything is mixed evenly.

Oil up a big frying pan and start balling up the meat with a teaspoon. You want the meatballs to be about the inch in diameter. Fry on medium heat for three to five minutes.

Served with carrots and parsley. Enjoy!

I experimented together a venison roast of loin. It didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t match. I won’t tell you the mismatching ingredient yet, let’s see if you can guess!

Heres what I used:

• about 1lbs of deer loin
• couple of table spoons of olive oil
• 1 yellow squash
• 2 carrots
• about an inch fresh ginger root
• 1 cinnamon stick
• garlic
• Jamaican “Pickapeppa Sauce”
• 1 large sweet potato

Oil up a deep pan for the deer, set the oven at 350F and just mix all the ingredients together. Mince four cloves of garlic, halve and cube the squash, chop the carrots, slice the ginger root thinly – one slice per piece of loin. Pour over the pickapeppa sauce and mix until everything is covered. Then pour the mix into the oven dish and put it in for about 20-25 minutes for medium rare meat.

While the deer is cooking, cut the sweet potato into long strips/fries. About a third of an inch thick each. Fry them either in oil or butter but be sure to turn often. They burn very easy and take 5-10 minutes to cook.

So can you figure out what the mismatching ingredient was?

Answer: GINGER

As with past seafood dishes, this one is very simple (but takes a bit longer). I made a very delicious seafood soup with salmon fillets.

This recipe is a very nice one to follow because it does take time, but you are working the whole time, whether it be prepping the ingredients or washing off the cutting board/cleaning dishes.

Alright, so this is what you’ll need:

• A bit less than a pound of salmon fillets (or any other fatty fish)
• Sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 yellow squashes
• 2 zucchinis
• 2 medium large potatoes
• 2 celery stalks
• 1-2 carrots
• 3½ cups of stock (chicken or fish)
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 onion
• 1 can (14oz) of tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf
• Italian parsley for garnish

Start off with cutting up the onions into cubes or chunks. Anything that will fit a spoon basically. Then chop up the celery roughly. If you want to you can also chop up the carrot now, or add it later if you like it crunchier. Put two to three table spoons of olive oil in the pan and heat it up. Tip in the vegetables you just cut up and stir occasionally, cook until softened.

While the onions and vegetables soften start chopping up the squashes and potatoes, again into anything that will fit on a spoon.  Tip them into the pot together with the sprigs of thyme and mix around. When everything got a bit of colour add the can of tomatoes, stock and bay leaf. Stir put the lid on and let simmer for about ten minutes.  Add the zucchinis, mix, and let simmer for another couple of minutes. Lastly add the salmon fillets on top of the soup (don’t mix it down yet!). Put the lid back on and let simmer until the fish is cooked through. Push a spoon through occasionally to check on the fish.

When the salmon is cooked through, start breaking it up with a spoon (or your tool of choice) until in small chunks – stir and serve :)

So to be honest, I had no idea what broil was so I had to Wikipedia it. Turns out it’s just like grilling – cool! So I looked for some vegetables that would be delicious grilled and came up with: asparagus, carrots and cherry tomatoes.

So here is the pre broiling picture. I put them up neatly, not stacking anything, and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled salt on top of that. Finished it off with plenty of thyme. Then I put it into the oven and broiled it for approximately 10-12 minutes.

For 10-12 minutes everything was pretty good. Texture wise the carrot probably needed another minute or two in the oven but I was a bit scared of burning it all too much since the thyme came out black! Other than that it was excellent! The asparagus was slightly crispy outer and savoury soft centre. Definitely great as the side salad on any hot dish :)

First of all I want to thank my boss one more time for giving me the venison! It was super kind and as tender as it could be. Thank you!

Last night was the first time in a long time I actually read a recipe instead of just inventing one as I went on. I have never cooked deer by myself before, I have eaten it countless amount of times though. It cooked pretty much just like any other meat but it tastes oh so much better.

What you need:
In the top of the image is the deer meat.
From the left to the right we have: celery, a carrot, rosemary, thyme, an onion, some juniper berries, and white peppercorns (hard to see).

Also what you can’t really see in the image is a bottle of red wine.

I was a bit hasty reading the recipe, apparently this was for a marinade, haha. But I figured you could do it anyway and after  tasting the result I tell you: YOU CAN DO IT WITHOUT MARINATING IT!

You don’t have to add the ingredients in any specific order as long as they are mixed all together in the end. I just put the meat into the pan as in the image, poured on about a cup of wine and mixed it with the herbs. Crushed the juniper berries (with the side of the knife) and added the white peppercorn whole. Sliced up both the carrot and the three celery stalks. Then added a whole yellow onion on top.

All the herbs should measure up to about a table spoon as well as the juniper berries and white peppercorn.

Now put this in the middle of the oven at 400F for about an hour. And halfway through or earlier try to stir and “flip” things around so the top layer don’t get burnt. In hindsight I think I would’ve used a bigger pan. Which probably also would have compelled me to make even more food :)

Here is the final result. Served it with mashed potatoes (which I actually had to order for delivery!!)

And finally I want to say that before I started making this I wanted it to smell and taste like forest. I think I succeeded. Next time I would like to add more herbs and spices though. This was perfect for this kind of weather as well, cloudy and rainy.