Becca's blog of heavenly bites: Hook and Ladder cooking classes with Micheal Quinn part 5

This week at the Hook and Ladder we did venison, my second favorite meat, my first being ostrich (the perfect cross between duck and steak). But very few people realize how tasty and healthy venison is. There is less fat in a venison steak than in a chicken fillet so it is the perfect meat if you are on a diet. The only question you need to ask yourself is do you want it farmed or wild. Farmed usually works out a little bit cheaper and tastes less gamy and wild is almost guaranteed to be full of natural goodness.

Personally, I buy my venison off of Elda Wild Venison. I have bought off other companies and found the quality and recipes can vary. If you would rather farmed venison, Crough Farm sells theirs weekly at the Butlerstown market every Saturday also. It is very important to get to know your local producers. Jason from Elda has a very healthy approach to his hunting. Every bit of the animal gets used, from jewelry to pelts to knives, all made to use up every bit of the animal. I find this amazing. If one is willing to hunt and kill an animal I think the respect for that animal has to be shown in the manner in which you deal with the remains. I find it best to insure all the animal is used and none is wasted so I really respect Elda for doing just that and their meat is hung in the proper manner allowing the meat to be top quality.

In this class Micheal wanted us to realize the importance of presentation so we all had to make our plates look as appetizing as our food was to be and we were shown easy techniques to do this. I've always been lazy when it comes to presentation. I think the food should talk for itself, however once I was shown easy ways to plate up pretty I kind of liked knowing how to do it. There are a few pictures of the process below should any of you be interested in classying up your plates.

In this class we learned how to get venison steak cooked to perfection alongside with two amazingly tasty dishes red cabbage and parsnip pureé. Both were delicious. In this weeks blog I will tell you how to make the red cabbage.

Red cabbage with cooking apples:

For this you will need

a red cabbage
cooking apples
apple cider vinegar
sultanas
fresh ginger
salt & pepper to season

Cut up the red cabbage into small pieces. Cut the cooking apple into lager chunks the larger the chunks of apple the easier they will get small as the dish cooks. Pop them in a saucepan. Add 3 table spoons of cider vinegar. Grate up the ginger, put it all on the hob at a high temperature and watch the veg sweat. Add a touch of water if you find that there is not enough liquids in here and add the sultanas and salt and pepper to flavor. Leave this do its thing until all the veg has cooked properly. Then taste to insure you have seasoned enough. Add salt and pepper if needed and you have yummy sweet cabbage.

Here are some handy facebbok links

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Elda-Wild-Irish-Venison/314038045356517?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/ButlerstownMarket?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/hookandladder.waterford.7?fref=ts