Venison in red wine and blackcurrant sauce

I would like to wish all of you peaceful and relaxing Easter time! We’ve just came back from warm and sunny Istanbul, full of blossoming tulips and twittering birds to grey, cloudy Helsinki, still covered with 10cm layer of snow … Pretty depressing to be welcomed by rain, nevertheless after one week  of delightful laziness I feel I’m back boasting with energy 🙂 Now I just need to unpack, go through several hundred of pictures and I promise that soon I’ll be back for good with some posts about Istanbul, its fabulous street foods and some recipes too!

For now though, I’ll leave you with the post about delicious wild bites 😉 We had enjoyed these pretty venison steaks just before we left to Turkey. They were fried and sprinkled with crushed peppercorns, served with potato mash and honey roasted carrots and parsnips. The sauce is a red wine and blackcurrant reduction. I’ve eaten such once in a restaurant and tried to replicate it. It came out pretty well, I must say.

INGREDIENTS

small bunch of thyme
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp juniper berries, crushed
300ml red wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon)
1 cube of organic beef stock
2-3 tbsp blackcurrant jam (depending on acidity of your wine and your taste)
25g butter, cubed

1. Put the wine, garlic, juniper berries, thyme and a beef stock cube into a saucepan and bring to boil. Reduce the heat and simmer till the liquid volume decreases by half.

2. Pull the sauce through a sieve and return it to the pot. Add jam, season with salt and pepper. Slowly add butter, one cube at a time, whisking continuously till it melts and adds a nice thickness and gloss.