Game Stew

Ingredients

• ~1 pound venison. I bought some flank and shoulder to dice.
• ~3/4 pound rabbit. (Not de-boned anything in a while so it took about 15 mins, you could ask the butcher to do this if they don't sell rabbit off the bone, or you could google how to do it I guess)
• 2 sticks celery.
• 2 Roquito sweet chillies.
• 2 onions/a leek. Doesn't really matter too much, the leek is slightly stronger flavour, but it won't stick out.
• 2 cloves of garlic.
• ~6 carrots.
• Bottle of red wine.
• Herbs/Spices - thyme, bay leaf, fresh chillies (maybe 1 bird eye or a couple of generic shop ones)
• Flour for dusting
• Tomato purée.

Method

All the meat into a bowl (not metal, it'll fuck it up) wine over the top, about 1/2 the bottle. Into this you want the thyme, bayleaf and a crushed garlic clove. Leave it alone for as long as you can. I'm aiming for overnight.

Prep all the veg, chunky chopped carrots, fine chopped onions and celery, de-seed/membrane and fine slice the hot chilli's, de seed/fine slice the big sweet chillies.

Veg into a hot frying pan, get a bit of colour then drop the heat to stop them burning. Pour all the wine/herbs off the meat into a saucepan then add the veg after it's all soft and squishy and the onion is a bit see through. Don't de-glaze the frying pan yet, just put it to one side. Leave the saucepan on a very low simmer, stir it occasionally.

Get all the meat, get as much juice/wine off it as possible, pat it dry with a clean cloth (not kitchen roll or similar, that's just silly. It'll stick to the meat) then flour dust, you can add a bit of paprika or cumin to the flour if you want. you can roll it in flour if you want I tend to flour dust a few times until the flour doesn't stick, then jiggle extra flour off.

Get that frying pan back on the heat, bit of oil nice and hot, quick fry the meat to seal and colour it. Do it in batches if need be, but keep the heat in the pan up. All the meat into the simmering saucepan, de-glaze the frying pan with some red wine, pour that into the saucepan too.

Stir the saucepan vigorously to get that flour thickening the sauce, add tomato purée leave it to simmer for ~45 mins/1 hour.

In that time, prep anything else you'll be serving with the stew. I'm doing new potatoes and vinegar red cabbage.

Nom everything. Fall asleep.