I rushed home after a long day out and about and started preparing the kitchen. I started out by making the marinade. I went with something sweet, something foresty, something different…

My balsamic/forest marinade:

• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp honey
• plenty of thyme
• 2 tsp rosemary
• 2 tbsp juniper
• 2 cloves of garlic
• dash of liquid smoke

To make it you just have to mix everything together basically. I added everything in the order of my recipe (it’s an original!) got out the garlic press for the garlic cloves, crushed the juniper with the back of a knife and halved all the rosemary leaves. Stripped the thyme sprigs off of its leaves and mixed. While letting the flavours mix I prepared the skewers.

Here’s what I used:

• 1 lbs deer steak
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 yellow squash
• 10 portobello mushrooms
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 jalapeño

Cut up everything into similar sized squares, with exception for the jalapeños of course. I cut the mushrooms into pieces of four. For the squashes I first halved them and then chopped them. Some of the steak pieces were long and thin so I wrapped up onions and jalapeños in some. Like hidden goodies.

Brush the marinade over the skewers. And put into the oven to broil for about ten minutes or until vegetables is starting to get golden. The venison will stay pink/red when broiling.

Boil up some rice and mix all of these ingredients in a big bowl.

• Rice
• Big handful of Italian parsley
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 lemons

It’s all ready to serve. I wish I had a barbecue or one of those grilling pans, but broiling things in the oven works almost as well. Extra thanks to the liquid smoke. It really gave it that barbecue flavour!

After 10 mins of broiling

Served on top of lettuce with a side of rice

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!

Ever since “Food, Incorporated” I am very peculiar about eating organic meat. I was before even, but mostly because it tasted odd or bad even. Last night I had to swallow my pride and cook Tyson’s chicken breasts; 1. which in the past has tasted bad to me 2. Tyson’s is portrayed to be one of the worst food companies out there by the film. But we just got out of a recession (yes, I am making an excuse!)

Back to cooking.

Here’s what I used:

• 3 chicken breasts
• 1 lemon
• sage
• rosemary

Start off with cutting off any white parts of the meat and then cut a slit on the side of the breast. Kind of like cutting a ciabatta. Start stuffing the breasts with the sage leaves, try to lay them flat in the cavity and then put slices of lemon on top of the sage. Close the breast up as well as you can and squeeze the rest of the lemon over the meat. Sprinkle rosemary until pretty much covered each breast and then put in oven at 350F for about 45 minutes. It can be tricky turning the chicken when it’s stuffed like this but it shouldn’t be any problem unless you’re like me and accidentally cut straight through the chicken breast and end up with a two pieced breast. Oops!

So lets start with the fish, I bought a barramundi (also known as “Asian bass”) a smaller fish around the pound size. I bought it whole and untouched meaning I had to clean, scale and gut it myself.

Clean the fish by rinsing it under cold water and scale it with the dull edge of a knife (a regular dinner knife works, just don’t press too hard). When I did this scales were flying everywhere. In my face, eyes, hair, all over my shirt and on the kitchen floor. Once again I suggest buying a pre-cleaned fish. I was scared about gutting the fish since as far as I can remember I’ve never done it with my own hands. I’ve watched a lot of people do it though. But it was very simple. You just cut a medium deep cut at the belly of the fish, starting at the vent and continuing up towards the head and gills. Don’t cut too deep, you don’t want to puncture the organs. When you have cut open the cavity just stick a finger in there and pull out all the contents. Some things you might have to use a little knife help for but it shouldn’t be much. Then rinse out the cavity and you have your scaled and gutted fish ready to be cooked.

Wrap aluminium wrap around a baking pan and oil it lightly or spray it with cooking spray. Place the fish and make diagonal cuts like in the image.

For the stuffing:

• 1 sage leaf for each cut
• 2 thin garlic slices for each cut
• rosemary sprinkled in each sage leaf and all over the fish
• 1 lemon

Place some garlic and rosemary on a big sage leaf and roll it up, place it in a cut. You can also put a slice of garlic on the outside of the sage leaf for extra flavour. Cut the lemon into wedges and stuff the cavity. I pressed them lightly to spill some lemon juice on the inside.

Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the flesh is completely white and tender.

I had trouble serving this for one reason, being that I used too little oil and the fish was stuck to the aluminium. But other than that I just cut it up and served on a plate of potatoes with some hollandaise sauce :)

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.