(Thanks to Tandy Sinclair of Lavender & Lime for this delicious spoil of a recipe! See link below.)
Here’s a fantastic recipe for cooking a leg of Blesbuck. Many people say Blesbuck tastes a lot like lamb, so it works well with rosemary and thyme 🙂
Ingredients
- 1 kg venison leg – I used blesbok
for the marinade
- 500 ml red wine
- 4 sprigs of rosemary (subsituted for Juniper berries)
- 4 sprigs thyme
- 2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
For the rub
- 1 star anise
- 5 mls dried rosemary
for the venison
for the gravy
- 5 mls liquid beef stock
- 10 g butter
- 10 mls arrow root
Method
for the marinade
- Place the venison and the marinade ingredients into a large ziploc bag and leave to marinade overnight
- At least an hour before you want to start cooking, remove the venison from the marinade and drain – reserve the marinade
- Pat dry
for the rub
- Use a spice grinder to grind the ingredients until fine
for the venison
- Season well
- Add the coffee to the rub and mix in well
- Rub this all over the venison
- Allow to come up to room temperature
- Preheat the oven to 180° Celsius
- Heat the oil and butter in a pan
- Sear the venison on all sides
- Place in an ovenproof dish and cook for 25 minutes resulting in a medium rare doneness
- Allow to rest for 10 minutes before carving
for the gravy
- As soon as you’ve taken the meat out of the marinade put it into a saucepan and simmer until reduced by half
- Pass through a sieve and return to the pan with the stock
- Whisk in the butter
- Make a sludge with some of the stock and the arrow root and add to the pan
- Cook until it’s as thick as you want it