Yukhoe - Korean Venison Tartare 육회

Yukhoe

This Korean version of steak tartare was originally made with horse meat and more recently with beef. For best results the meat needs to be absolutely as fresh as possible. At Hunter Gather Cook this dish is made with venison fillet within a couple of hours of it coming off the deer so we have the perfect opportunity to make the finest of dishes.

Forage:

10 Wild Garlic Leaves

1 Bunch of Three Cornered Leek

16 Edible Wild Flowers to Garnish ( Dog Violet, Wild Garlic Flowers, Three Cornered Leek, Primrose, Cuckoo Flower)

4 Sorrel Leaves

Ingredients:

1 pound / 450g Venison Fillet

2 Pears

4 small egg yolks or 4 quails eggs

2 tablespoon pine nuts

Seasoning Mixture:

4 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon clear honey

3 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

2 tablespoon sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper

1 tsp chilli powder

Wild mies en plas

Firstly the Venison Fillet should be put in the freeze for 1 ½ to 2 hours, this hardens it up slightly making cutting it thinly a lot easier.

For the seasoning mixture add the soy, honey, sesame oil, sesame seed, pepper and chilli powder to a bowl. Next very finely chop the Wild Garlic and Three Cornered Leek and add to the bowl. Stir well to combine and set to one side.

Yukhoe seasoning mixture

Fill another bowl with a cup of water and add a teaspoon of salt to it. This will keep your pears from browning whilst preparing the rest of the dish. Peel and julien the pear cutting it into matchstick sized pieces and place in the bowl of salted water until ready to plate up.

Take the partially frozen venison fillet and slice it in the same way as the pears. You want lots of tiny matchsticks of venison. Add the sliced venison to the seasoning mixture and stir well.

Making sure the venison fillet is free of any fat and sinue

To plate up make a bed of the pear sticks, take a serving of the venison and seasoning and place on top of the pears making a small indent in the top of the venison. Carefully place the egg yolk on top of the venison. If using a quails egg the top should be cut off and the egg put in the same place ready to be poured over when served.

Garnish around the stack with whatever edible wild flowers you have found, the sorrel and serve!

Yukhoe - The finished article

Wild Garlic, Smoked Bacon and Parsnip Tagliatelle

So with spring coming round super early this year I thought I’d get the year going with a Wild Garlic recipe. Now the floods have subsided you’ll find it sprouting out beside the riverbanks with abundance. The smell of it in the wild to me is always evocative of the end of winter and start of spring, but be sure not to use too much as the smell on the breath is more evocative of someone with stinky garlic breath!

Wild Garlic sprouting after the floods.

This leads me on to one thing that I’d like to touch on before moving on to the recipe. I think it is important in foraging to only pick what you need. When faced with huge swathes of wild garlic in front of you it would be easy to get carried away and just pick carrier bags full of the stuff, most of which will never get used and will eventually just end up stinking your house out! As a rule of thumb I would say replacing 1 clove of garlic with 4 wild garlic leaves is about right.

Archie the foraging dog finds his target.

On to the recipe! I have been cooking this recipe since around 2001 and as far as I can remember it originated from one of Jamie Olivers early cook books. The addition of wild garlic instead of regular garlic adds an extra depth of flavour and I’d recommend wherever possible buying locally smoked bacon from your nearest farm shop or even direct from the smokery. The bacon I used was from the Wealden Smokery so if you are local to Sussex you won’t find better!

Wild Garlic Shoots

Wild Garlic, Bacon and Parsnip tagliatelle

Serves 4

Foraged:

8 Wild Garlic leaves finely chopped

Ingredients and Prep:

Handful of Rosemary, destalked, leaves finely chopped

100g Butter cut into 4 knobs

600g Parsnips, peeled halved and very thinly sliced lengthways

12 Slices of smoked streaky bacon roughly chopped up

200g Grated parmesan

500g dried tagliatelle

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Fry the bacon and rosemary with one of the knobs of butter in the largest frying pan or wok you have. After 3 or 4 minutes add another knob of butter, the wild garlic and parsnips stirring occasionally to ensure nothing burns in the pan. At the same time put the tagliatelle on as instructed on the packet.

Once the pasta is al dente strain it out reserving a little of the cooking water. Add the pasta, parmesan and rest of the butter to the bacon and parsnips and give it a good stir. If it looks like it’s a little stodgy then loosen with a little of the reserved cooking water. Season and Serve!

Wild Garlic, Smoked Bacon and Parsnip Tagliatelle

Wild garlic pesto

The wild garlic season may have come to an end (April-June) - but I found myself with a craving for it  so got out some Wild Garlic I froze a couple of weeks ago to use with lunch...