Creative Cooking

This falls under the category of  "creative " for me because it's using meat I am not as familiar with cooking as say chicken, turkey or beef. 

Several months back Kevin's brother Patrick blessed us with a care package of venison he had processed and packaged from his hunting success, then mailed in a styrofoam shipping container with dry ice.  It had deer burger, deer hot dogs, deer steaks, deer roast and deer bologna.

I put these in the freezer and over time have been taking them out and introducing them to my family. We've enjoyed the "new" meat in our diets and it's caused me to explore and expand my culinary skills when it comes to cooking this.  The venison has a slightly stronger flavor than some of the other meats, so finding the complimentary spicing to best bring out its flavor has been my challenge.

The hot dogs and balogna are already flavored so no challenge there.  The burger and roast I've served in similar style dishes that I'd use beef for, only I found I added a bit more spice to it.
Then last night I had 4 steaks that were smaller that I was trying to figure out what to do with for dinner.  It was going to have to be a part of some dish since there wasn't enough for each person.

So I decided a twist on the one pot meals I'm known for throwing together in my family would be the answer.  It was later in the day and needed to be done in a reasonable amount of time.

First I made my rosemary potatoes:

I slice red potatoes, place them in a glass cooking dish with diced onion (1/4 of an onion), poured 2 T of olive oil over this.  I grabbed a couple sprigs of rosemary from my yard and used scissors to snip the pieces over the potatoes.  Sprinkled minced garlic and Montreal Steak spice on, add a little water and pop into the microwave for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally.

In the meantime,  I took the venison steaks and pounded them down, sprinkled the Montreal Steak spice on them and dipped them in flour.  I had a pan on the stove with 1 T olive oil and 2 T butter heating then threw in the other 1/4 of the onion diced.  After sauteing the onion I placed the venison in and cooked until done.  Approximately 15 minutes.  I sliced this into bite size pieces then took the leftover peas from the previous nights dinner and the sliced meat and mixed in with the potatoes. I microwaved about a couple minutes more and let sit for a few minutes for the flavors to mingle.

When I served this my families only complaint was there wasn't MORE!!  Think I've found a winner and it has stretched me to try something I'm not as familiar with using.  That's good because Patrick is really anxious for Kevin and Cameron to go hunting more once we move.  Think I'll be getting a lot more opportunity to try my culinary creativeness in the future  : )

For dessert we enjoyed the Zucchini Brownies I made in the afternoon. You can find the recipe here:

Zucchini Brownies