Christmas Dinner Roast Venison and John Duval Eligo 2008

This year I cooked the Christmas Dinner. I did roast venison and it was mighty good. First I prepared a sauce in a large frying pan:

I chopped up an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic,
I fried the onions with some sunflower oil,
I added 200 ml of good port,
I added the garlic,
I added about 500 ml of water,
I added several blackberries,
A good dash of lemon juice,
I added some chicken stock,
A teaspoon of honey,
Some sea salt to taste,

I added a few juniper berries, some crushed cloves, pepper corns and a stick of cinnamon to taste.

I cooked the sauce whilst stirring it occasionally. I saved some of the juice to make a sauce later. I reduced the remaining sauce until it was thick.

I fried the joint of venison both sides until it was just becoming brown making sure that the juices of the sauce were well incorporated around the joint.

I warmed the oven to about 180 degrees C.

I greased an oven dish with some vegetable oil.  I coated the venison joint with the onions, garlic and berries remaining from the sauce on both sides. I added the remaining liquid to the joint.

I cooked the joint until it was cooked on the outside but rare in the middle.

I left the joint to rest in its dish before serving but covered the baking dish with foil.

After removing the joint to carve it. I poured out the juices and made the sauce.

My joint weighed about 1 kg so I cooked it for about 45 minutes at 180 degrees. I basted the joint and checked that it was not overcooked by piercing the flesh to ensure that the juices were running rare.

The joint was cooked perfectly and was full of game flavour. The seasoning , port and berry flavour went perfectly.

I kept the remaining sauce for the next day.

You may be asking, what is the best wine to go with this? Well you need a top red wine which has a full flavour to match and which has a good structure with sufficient tannin to cleanse the palate between mouthfuls of succulent meat.

I choose a fabulous candidate: John Duval Eligo 2008 Shiraz from the Barossa Valley. This wine will cost you a few bob; mine was a present from some Australian friends. I am a lucky man. This wine was lovely. It had the perfect balance of tannin, acidity and dryness. It was of full body. It was concentrated and complex. It had a strong taste of red fruits with a hint of oak, vanilla and cloves. It had long length on the palate. It had all of the attributes of an excellent wine, so it was good value for money. At six years old ready for drinking but this wine could have been kept longer.

It holds its own well with the top red wines from France, Italy, Spain and the US and, certainly, other top wines from Australia. Of course, this is wine to be savoured with the best food and should not be sloshed down at a barbecue. It went down well with some strong French cheeses after the main course.

It made a memorable day, with me cooking the Christmas day meal, even more memorable. My French wife was duly impressed and the wine won her over too.

https://www.masterofmalt.com/wine/john-duval/john-duval-eligo-reserve-shiraz-2008-wine/ 

Osteria Da Fabrizio Christmas Eve 2016

We like to go out on Christmas eve, my wife and I, and why not saunter down to a regular and favourite restaurant? Once again we went to Osteria Da Fabrizio where regularly we both enjoy the food, the wine and the music. It is in Orpington in the London borough of Bromley and it's half an hour's brisk walk away- for us anyway.

The music is important to me when I am dining and Fabrizio always plays the best jazz and blues. Every year he resists the temptation to play "Jingle Bells" "White Christmas" and "Away in a Manger". This alone is good reason to dine there.

For some reason this year every body seemed to be happier, maybe no one had been caught up in traffic jams trying to enter and leave the huge and local shopping malls.

We met some great people. I thought I recognised the accent of the young people on the next table; they were from Bermondsey and my mum was born there too. We enjoyed a lovely conversation ranging from life in South London to the exploits of Millwall football club.

On another table some of Fabrizio's French relatives were visiting from Nice which is  not far from the Italian border. My wife and I enjoyed a good conversation with them too.

We had very friendly if not familiar company.

 For food we shared starters of "Grigliata di Mare" or octopus calamari with king prawns. And, "Tagliolini Alla Coda d'Aragosta Marinata" or pasta with marinated fresh lobster tail.

For main course we both ate "Orata Al Cartoccio" or steamed sea bream.

For dessert we  both chose Chocolate fondant. We rarely chose the same menu but we could not resist the selection. All of this was delicious and served in an unpretentious and down to earth style.

The chocolate fondant was well cooked on the outside but runny in the middle; for me this is an indication of a chef that knows what he is doing.

So what wine did we drink? Well, we drank white wine of course. We washed the meal down with a bottle of 2010 Abruzzo Duca Thaulero Passerina Superiore DOP. This wine has the right balance of acidity, dryness, alcoholic strength, fruit flavour, concentration and complexity to complement both shell fish and sea bream etc.  It is high quality wine  at a reasonable price. The Abruzzo region is on the east coast of Italy in the central region. So it is no wonder that the wine goes well with fish - perfect.  Apparently, the Passerina grape is named after the sparrow which loves to eat the small ripe fruits on the vine - dream on about viticultural paradise.

http://www.casalthaulero.it/en/vini/duca-thaulero/ 

I could not resist a glass of Cognac with my coffee but my wife did. We both sipped a glass of Limoncello afterwards. I was mixing it a bit but there were no side effects. I resisted the temptation to hear health warnings ringing in my ears on the walk home as I preferred to sing jazz to myself. It was Christmas, after all , and I did not want to spoil a perfect evening.



If ever you are nearby Orpington then try www.dafabrizio.co.uk/our-location/