the first, and last, time I cook venison

I am increas­ing­ly of the opin­ion that I am not, in fact, a real cook. Cer­tain­ly I am not a chef. I read of my men­tor Orlan­do’s bril­liant escapades with sour­dough, with tri­an­gu­lar-shaped rolls that he bakes close togeth­er so that his restau­rant guests can lit­er­al­ly “break bread” togeth­er. The only bread that will ever be bro­ken in my kitchen will be the hope­less­ly sol­id con­coc­tion that I am sure would be the result of me and yeast get­ting togeth­er. I just don’t have it in me, the pre­ci­sion, the patience, the dedication.

And tonight yet anoth­er indi­ca­tion of my ama­teur sta­tus: deer. I mean, veni­son. But you get my point.

I am fine with chick­en, beef, pork. As Avery points out, it’s because the ani­mals are not appeal­ing. Lamb give me a minute, MINUTE pause. Part­ly because I can remem­ber feed­ing their lit­tle selves at our Con­necti­cut farmer friend’s barn, and Avery lat­er being giv­en a hat made with their wool. But I tell myself they have had a long (well, not so very) and hap­py life in the fields of the very Cotswolds hills where we take long week­ends. We should all have such a hap­py life and end up being eat­en and appreciated.

Then, this week­end at my beloved Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket (my week­ly haunt when I lived near­by last year), I suc­cumbed to the lure of the most beau­ti­ful dis­play of meat I have ever seen: the butch­er of Cleeve Farm, Devon, cut­ting up gor­geous veni­son into fil­lets, and “short-cook steaks.” While John was wait­ing in the queue of Mal­don Oys­ters, I ven­tured over and pur­chased three steaks. The deep pur­ply red of the flesh! The soft tex­ture, the assur­ance from the butch­er that I would be back next week after I cooked his veni­son. And NO pho­tographs of actu­al deer, at the stall.

I came away excit­ed to try them. And I thought Orlan­do’s sauce for fil­let steak would be per­fect with them, with a side of pota­to puree with creme fraiche and a nice big bowl of sauteed sug­ar snap peas with chili olive oil.

And… they were. Per­fect, I mean. Gen­tly sauteed in a mix­ture of olive oil and but­ter, sea­soned per­fect­ly, just medi­um rare so that the flesh was rosi­ly pink. The sauce was a divine inspi­ra­tion to go with veni­son, the sweet­ness of the shal­lots and Marsala a per­fect foil for the intense fla­vor of the meat. But it was… deer. As in, the ani­mals that crossed our lawn and our road in Con­necti­cut this sum­mer, to our awe and delight.

John had no such scru­ples. He hap­pi­ly devoured his steak, ate the rem­nants of Avery’s once she had been defeat­ed by her emo­tions. He was unmoved by our doubts, say­ing sim­ply, “Just once, I wish you would cook some­thing I like,” grin­ning down at his plate scraped clean, and head­ing off to the new Apple store at West­field to try to fix my com­put­er. I was left to do the con­sid­er­able dish­es from this extrav­a­gan­za, and to con­tem­plate my moral dilem­ma. Deer.

The rest of my adven­tures at the farmer’s mar­ket were quite peace­ful and non-pro­duc­tive of eth­i­cal issues. I bought buf­fa­lo milk cheeses (one young and soft, almost like a moz­zarel­la, and one a hard Ched­dar-like con­fec­tion called Junas, quite delight­ful) from Alham Wood Cheeses, and they were per­fect to sam­ple right at the stall. Although how we can have had any appetite for sam­ples is beyond me, as we had con­sumed with total gus­to a total of 18 oys­ters at the Mal­don stall, farmed in the Black­wa­ter Riv­er in Essex, ordered six at a time, and slurped down with the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of shal­lots in vine­gar, Tabas­co and lemon juice. There is no more divine thing to eat in this world than Mal­don Oys­ters shucked as you speak, freez­ing cold and slip­pery. Heav­en. Would you believe that on a giv­en Sun­day in my mar­ket he shucks 500 of the lit­tle darlings?

Then it was onto World Coun­try Organ­ics where I was suck­ered, I can only think of it now, into buy­ing a quan­ti­ty of small, GREEN toma­toes. Why did I do this? The stall­hold­er assured me they would make love­ly chut­ney. I don’t want to make green toma­to chut­ney. I bought them, God save me, and brought them home, and we tried to eat them, but they were a hor­rid com­bi­na­tion of rock-hard and bit­ter­ly acidic. My moth­er in law, no mean cook, advis­es me to roast them with olive oil, gar­lic, maybe a real toma­to or two and a red pep­per to add sweet­ness… I will try tomor­row. Advice grate­ful­ly accepted.

This evening, before my deer adven­ture, found us at Avery’s new school for Par­ents’ Evening, to trail round the enor­mous Great Hall sit­ting down at five-minute inter­vals with her var­i­ous teach­ers, being told of her exploits. And may I kvell? While we tried real­ly hard, last year, not to obsess over school choice, it real­ly was a thrill to have all six of her schools to choose from, and to feel we’d made the right deci­sion pair­ing her up with this par­tic­u­lar august insti­tu­tion. Tonight we were told in no uncer­tain terms that she’s thriv­ing. Absolute­ly doing won­der­ful­ly, ask­ing thought­ful ques­tions, look­ing out for her class­mates, con­tribut­ing imag­i­na­tive ideas to the atmos­phere. We both felt rather over­whelmed by hap­pi­ness that she’s been such a con­sis­tent per­son­al­i­ty: patient, intense, rather social­ly cau­tious (hmm, is that her father’s influ­ence or her moth­er’s, one asks?), focused and ded­i­cat­ed. So fun­ny to think that that is exact­ly how her kinder­garten teacher described her, 8 years ago. I think there is actu­al­ly not very much wig­gle room in a child’s per­son­al­i­ty: you get a cer­tain per­son and it’s the best you can do to nur­ture it and make sure it is lis­tened to and appre­ci­at­ed. Well done, young Avery. We are very proud.

I have saved the best news for last: I am a new aunt! Devot­ed as I am to my beloved niece Jane, I have, in the last 36 hours or so, acquired a new lit­tle sprout, dear baby Mol­ly. My sis­ter is thriv­ing after her ordeal, proud and peace­ful, and hap­py to have it all over. I can­not wait to meet her, at Christ­mas time. Con­grat­u­la­tions, every­one, on a new mem­ber of the fam­i­ly. How fun­ny to think that sud­den­ly, overnight, Novem­ber 9 is some­one’s birth­day. We love you already, Molly.