Roast Wild Venison - Loaded and Bacon Wrapped!

I decided to use one of the remaining legs of venison in the freezer that one of my son's provided us with. Venison can be a bit gamey and/or tough, so it's worth a little extra effort to make it tasty. I looked at a few ideas, and combined some of them to come up with the delicious, special dish! Side dishes of sweetcorn, green beans & Egyptian onions, and roasted new spuds made this a very yummy, almost fully home-grown or wild-caught meal.

Venison

Step 1:
Defrost leg of venison. Sprinkle leg lightly with salt, then rub with brown sugar. Refrigerate for at least an hour. (I left it overnight as I had cause to change my mind about which night we were having this).

Step 2: Preheat oven to 180C (350F)
Place in a food processor and pulse to mince (not puree):
3 Shallots (or 1 sweet onion)
3-4 peeled garlic cloves
6 leaves fresh basil
Sprig fresh rosemary - strip leaves from stalk and discard stalk
1/4 cup sweet red wine

Step 3:
Lay venison on chopping board. Rub onion/herb mix all over meat, then press it onto meat. It will then be wrapped in bacon, secured with toothpicks. I found the easiest way to achieve this was to lightly grease a roasting dish with olive oil, then lay some bacon in it. Press onion/herb mix into one side of roast, then lay that side down on the bacon. Press more mixture onto the roast, then lay more bacon over the top, wrap around the leg, and secure. Pour an extra 1/4 cup wine over the roast.

Cover roasting dish, and bake in oven for 2 hours. Then remove, uncover, turn leg over carefully, and place back in oven for a further 25-30 mins to brown, uncovered.

An hour into initial cooking, add new potatoes, turning them in the juices to coat.

When cooking is finished, remove meat and potatoes, and reduce pan juices in a pot on the stove - spoon over meat and veges when serving.

Tonight's Side Dishes

New potatoes - a combination of some purple ones my neighbour gave me to grow, and some white potatoes of a variety I'm trying this year. All were grown in grow bags in my greenhouse. This is the yield from three bags - not a great yield - but the spuds grown in them were left overs from planting my main barrels, so bonus spuds. And they tasted SO good - especially the purple ones which are DELICIOUS! I went and harvested them after I put the roast in the oven, then scrubbed them and added them to the dish. Can't get any fresher than that! Turned out to be just the right amount for the four of us at home tonight.

French Green Beans - these lovely little tender green beans don't get any bigger than this - all they need is the stalk end trimming, and a quick wash. No other prep needed, and they're always sweet and tender. Picked this afternoon from the garden. Tonight I chopped up an Egyptian Walking onion, and sautéd it with the beans in some coconut oil, with a dash of tamari sauce.

Sweetcorn - picked this afternoon and simply boiled in salted water for about 10 mins. I decided to use up the small cobs tonight. They were actually really lovely and easy to handle at this size. Pity you can't grow them that way on purpose! :-)

So there you have it - wild-caught venison, prepared with home-grown shallots, garlic, basil & rosemary, and served with home-grown sweetcorn, beans & Egyptian onions, and new potatoes. The purchased ingredients were just the wine, bacon, oils, salt, sugar and tamari sauce. Soooooo good!