Have a Wild Feast this Holiday Season

I am lucky that Pop Pop and I started hunting elk together in my youth.  There are lots and lots of reasons why this makes me lucky, but one of those reasons is that it helped our Christmas traditions take on a much wilder flavor as we found success in the breaks country of Idaho.  The Christmas Feast was always a highlight of the season, as we are a family of foodies, but once we started packing our holiday roasts out of the mountains on our backs, the meal satisfied in more ways that it had previously.  At first unsure, extended family soon warmed to the idea of consuming game at the holiday meal, once they realized we could cook.

Elk has been the most common wild beast served at our holiday gatherings, but whitetail deer, mule deer, turkey, and antelope have made appearances.  Perhaps my favorite is when we have set aside an entire hind quarter of a doe antelope, from the knee to the hip, with the bone in.  This cut is known as a Steamship Round (a real butcher out there can feel free to correct me if I am wrong).  This is a pretty impressive hank of meat to set down in front of your loved ones and start carving like you are the head chef at the Waldorf.

This is about how your "Steamship Round" should look before you prep it for a holiday table.  Trim it up and serve the whole kit and caboodle.

Here is how we like to prepare it:  Rub the whole thing down with olive oil or butter, salt, and pepper.  It is always a good move to cram a bunch of cloves of garlic into little slits cut in the meat too.  Usually, I will have the oven turned up as high as it will go while I am prepping the meat, then I will turn it down to 375-425 as soon as the meat goes in (on a rack in a roasting pan).  Occasionally while it is cooking, take the meat out of the oven and baste it with more olive oil or melted butter mixed with salt and pepper.  I think this really helps build up a savory crust on the outside of the meat that otherwise wouldn't occur with game meat, because it doesn't have enough of its own fat.  It also helps keep the meat inside the crust deliciously moist.  We usually take the meat out of the oven when it has reached an internal temperature of 125 and let it rest.  We like rare meat, and frankly, I think game meat is amazingly delicious when rare and dog food when overcooked.  USDA recommends 145 degrees for rare beef, but I have never had a problem with our game meat.  I suppose it is one of those "at your own risk" things, but ruining your dinner is a much bigger risk, in my book, than getting a nasty bug from rare game meat...  Don't worry, if Uncle Whimpy doesn't like his meat rare, there will be some medium and well done pieces on the edges of the roast.

The second best thing about serving elk, deer, or antelope for Christmas dinner is serving Yorkshire Pudding with it!  If you have never had Yorkshire Pudding, you have never truly enjoyed the ultimate starch and meat pairing.  Hopefully you have saved all of the drippings from your game roast.  Joy of Cooking tells us we should have all of the following ingredients at room temperature before we begin...

Pre-heat oven to 400

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flower
1/2 teaspoon salt
(sift these into a bowl and make a well in the center)
Into the well pour 1/2 cup milk and stir it in
Beat 2 eggs into the mix
add 1/2 cup of water

Beat the batter until you get nice, big bubbles, then pour the mixture into the hot roasting pan with the meat drippings.

Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.

It is done when it is puffy, golden brown, crispy on the outside, chewy in the center.

So good with rare game meat, good gravy, and a robust red wine.

Grammy shows off a fine specimen of a Yorkshire pudding... good as it gets, she is a master. 

This particular Christmas dinner didn't include a steamship round, but elk roast is awfully darn nice too.

Have a Merry and Wild Christmas!!!