I know it’s easier for you if we come over to dinner at your place than vice-versa, what with the toddler’s early bedtime and everything. But we’d really like to help out,” Colleen wrote in an email. “Why don’t we bring some of the venison steaks one of our neighbors brought us? He shot the deer on the hill above our house.”
“We’d love that,” I wrote back. “It’ll give me a chance to cook something different.”
By “different” I guess I meant “brand-new”—I had no idea how to cook venison steaks, and most of the usual suspects among my cookbooks are silent on the matter, too (though venison stews have a following). The idea that interested me most was a venison steak au poivre from The River Cottage Meat Book, except that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s version calls for heavily peppering the steaks with ground black, white, and green peppercorns, then searing the steaks and serving them with a simplified Cumberland sauce made of redcurrant jam, brandy, and cream. Too sweet, I thought; it’ll overwhelm the venison. So I decided to give the steaks the traditional au poivre treatment instead, and turned to Jim Peterson’s Glorious French Food for the details.
Of all the techniques I learned in cooking school, making a pan sauce is the one that seemed to open the most doors. It’s a simple idea: Make your sauce in the same pan you’ve cooked your meat in, taking advantage of whatever tasty brown bits have been left behind. Here’s the drill: Drain the pan after cooking the meat, then toss in a tablespoon of shallots and let them soften. Add half a cup or so of wine and let that boil away until it becomes a thick syrup, then add some stock or water and let that reduce. (You can see how close this is to making gravy with pan drippings from a roast, and you can also see how it keeps you busy while the meat is resting, helping you fight the urge to serve it too early.) Assemble the plates and, right before serving, stir in some cold butter or heavy cream to take the edge off the wine-y, acidic sauce. Now spoon a tablespoon or so over each serving. The flavor is so concentrated and the sauce so rich that a little bit is all anyone needs or wants. You want sauce au poivre? Stir in a tablespoon of chopped green peppercorns off the heat. From such variations comes the saucier’s lexicon.
Our vension steaks took happily to the sauce au poivre. Green peppercorns are unripe, after all, and have a vegetal flavor and a subdued peppery bite, both of which make a nice contrast to a rich pan sauce. And because the venison was so lean, tender, and deeply flavorful, the grassiness of the pepper seemed like the perfect counterpoint. If I ever get more venison steaks I’ll know what to do with them.
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