Chipotle Venison

It's been so long since I posted a blog or a recipe that I have almost forgotten how to do so! Life has just been a roller coaster ride with never enough hours in the day! Time spirals out of control as you get older and my home cooked dinners have become a series of tried and tested old favourites with no dramas. This recipe however was an invention inspired by a recipe seen in Delicious magazine [my monthly treat] and it hit all the right notes. I decided that it was time to add this to the dieting dentist list of recipes as an easy but slightly more interesting version of a bog standard stew.

The recipe in the magazine was venison with port and prunes. I wanted to off set the sweet and sour elements of the dish with heat, so I decided to marinade the venison in garlic, rosemary and half as tub of chipotle paste. 

I marinaded it for as long as I could [a couple of hours but overnight would probably have been better] and then I fried the meat with onions and carrots. A glug of port to stop it all sticking to the bottom of the pan and then bubbled away most of the liquid before adding a pint of beef stock. Then with a tightly fitted lid, the pot was shoved into a preheated oven at 160 degrees for an hour and a half, then forgotten about till the next night. As with all stews, it tasted better the next day as all the ingredients had plenty of time to get to know each other well! The deep smoky chilli flavour was warming and mellow after the night of rest. The stew got served on top of some steaming hot fluffy Basmati rice and washed down with a Kiwi Pinot Noir. I think it would work well to bulk up the stew with pearl barley or maybe some tinned beans next time. But it's the tender venison and chipotle chilli that needs to be the star of the show!

 
Ingredients:
2 onions peeled and sliced
2 carrots peeled and cut into discs
Salt, Pepper, Rosemary springs, crushed garlic and chipotle paste for the marinade
1 pint of beef stock
1/2 a glass or good glug of port
Diced Venison

A couple of hours in the oven...
Et Voila!