Venison

This is my friend Stephen with the deer he shot last weekend:


It's an excellent photo, especially seeing as he took it himself using the timer. The great lighting, with the sun striking the deer's head, is pure luck he tells me. He's still sore from carrying all that meat several miles out of the bush to his car too.

He brought me some bits and pieces of meat to make salami with, and a gift of a piece of back steak. This is the salami meat:


Here it is after I spent a hour or so trimming off as much tendon, sinew, other connective tissue, and bits of beech forest as I could:


And here's the pile of trimmings that went first to the cats, and then outside to the hedgehogs:


I needed to add a good bit of pork fat, as venison is very lean. I seasoned it very simply, with just garlic and freshly ground white pepper Here are the stuffed salamis:


I decided to make pressed ones - they take a bit less time to dry, and I quite like the rectangular shape of the slices. It makes the finished product easy to identify too.

So here's what my spare shower looks like right now:


That's two pork salamis, a hare salami, and three venison salamis, left to right. The pork and hare are moulding up nicely and smelling good. Won't be too long before I can try them.