I like Venison, but find it usually disappoints me in terms of flavour. I consider it an exotic meat, certainly not a staple one, so maybe that’s why I expect more than gets delivered? Anyway, I found a recipe which involved marinading the meat in port for 2-3 days, which I quite fancied the idea of. In addition, the recipe had pickled walnuts in it, which I’m not sure I’ve ever used before, but again, liked the idea of using a very different ingredient.

The original recipe is here, although I tampered around with it in terms of only using Venison meat, instead of half Venison and half Beef. I also made my own venison stock, from the bones of the haunch I bought, rather than using beef stock. Last but not least, I obviously turned the recipe into a suet pudding from puff pastry used in the recipe. The suet pastry recipe and method of cooking is the same as the one used for the Steak, Oyster & Stout pudding.

The end result was enjoyable, but I’m not sure how much the pickled walnut added. I also thought the meat would have had more taste after marinading for 3 days, but the mushroom wedges worked really well in terms of adding some real juiciness to the naturally less moist venison meat. Whilst I did enjoy it, I’m leaning towards the fact I’m just not a huge venison fan.