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Venison steaks with red cabbage and potato pancakes

From: www.bbc.co.uk
SERVES 4

Potato pancakes are a lovely way to use up any leftover mashed potatoes and work really well with venison steaks and Tom's spiced red wine sauce.

For the red cabbage
½ red cabbage, shredded
150g/5½oz demerara sugar
40g/1½oz sea salt flakes
20 juniper berries, crushed
50g/1¾oz butter
For the potato pancakes
250g/9oz cold, dry mashed potato
75g/2½oz plain white flour
1 tsp baking powder
125ml/4fl oz milk
2 free-range eggs
3 tbsp rapeseed oil
For the clove sauce
200ml/7fl oz red wine
100ml/3½fl oz red wine vinegar
100g/3½fl oz redcurrant jelly
4 cloves
500ml/1lb 2oz beef stock
For the venison steaks
50g/1¾oz butter
4 tbsp rapeseed oil
4 venison T-bone steaks (about 250g/9oz each)
salt, to taste
½ lemon, juice only
150g/5½oz crème fraîche, to serve
1 tsp crushed Sichuan peppercorns
1 lime, juice only, to serve

1. Thirty minutes before you plan to cook, mix the red cabbage, demerara sugar, sea salt flakes and juniper berries together in a non-metallic bowl and leave for the cabbage to soften.

2. Meanwhile, make the potato pancakes, preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3 and then turn it off. Mix the mashed potato, flour and baking powder together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs, then stir the liquid ingredients into the potato mixture to form a batter.

3. Heat the rapeseed oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Drop spoonful of the batter into the pan and fry for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden-brown. Transfer them to the turned off oven to keep hot. You should get 12-16 pancakes from the batter.

4. To make the clove sauce, bring the red wine, red wine vinegar, redcurrant jelly and cloves to the boil in a saucepan over a high heat, stirring to dissolve the jelly. Continue boiling until the volume of liquid reduces to a glaze. Add the beef stock, return to the boil and reduce again by half to make a sauce. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bowl to remove the cloves, then set aside and keep warm.

5. For the red cabbage, rinse the cabbage thoroughly under cold running water. Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat, then add the cabbage to warm through. Do not overcook – the cabbage should still have some crunch. Keep warm until ready to serve.

6. For the venison steaks, melt the butter with the rapeseed oil in a large frying pan set over a high heat until the butter just starts to turn a hazelnut-brown colour. Season the steaks with a pinch of salt, add them to the pan and fry for 3-4 minutes on each side, or until they are a lovely dark colour. Squeeze in the lemon juice and baste the venison with the pan juices (do not overcook them, as venison has a very low fat content and can become dry). Remove the steaks from the pan and leave them to rest, covered with foil, for 10 minutes.

7. While the steaks are resting, mix together the crème fraîche, Szechuan pepper and lime juice.

8. To serve, put a couple of pancakes on each plate, add some red cabbage and a venison steak, and then pour over the clove sauce. Serve with the spiced crème fraîche on the side.