SPRING TO SUMMER // Recipe for four
Fallow deer, pink onions, wild fruits and plants
This recipe can be made with different parts of the deer; we use the loin and the fillet as well as the rump. Fallow deer are in abundance during this time of year. We use the sous vide method here, with vacuum bags and a water bath – you can ask your local butcher to vacuum bag the meat and wild fruits for you.
PINK ONIONS
8 small red onions, with roots left on
30 ml (1 fl oz) beetroot vinegar
60 ml (2 fl oz) linseed (flaxseed) oil
20 g (3/4 oz) salt
Peel back the onions to the young flesh. Put the onions in a vacuum bag with the vinegar, oil and salt. Seal and cook in a water bath at 78°C (172°F) for 35 minutes. Plunge the bag into iced water and leave until chilled.
When ready to serve, pour the onions and any juices from the bag into a saucepan and warm through. Keep the onion juices for warming the wild fruits, right.
WILD FRUITS
12 blackberries
50 g (13/4 oz) munthries
50 g (13/4 oz) riberries
50 g (13/4 oz) roadside plums
Pink onion juices (left)
Put all the fruits in a small saucepan and heat gently in the juices from the pink onions.
VENISON
400 g (14 oz) venison, your choice of cut
50 ml (13/4 fl oz) olive oil
20 g (3/4 oz) native pepper berries
Put the deer in a vacuum bag and add the olive oil and native pepper. Seal and cook in a water bath at 68°C (154°F) for 22 minutes. Plunge the bag into iced water and leave until chilled. Remove the venison from the bag and pat dry. Seal in a hot pan until nicely coloured on all sides and then leave to rest for 20 minutes.
Hunters and gatherers
Before European settlers arrived, the Southern Highlands region of Australia was occupied by the Tharawal people, who lived mainly on local plants, animals, fruits and vegetables and by fishing in the local streams. The women gathered the plants and vegetables of the region while the men hunted land mammals and speared fish. The name of our town, Bowral, is believed to have derived from the aboriginal word ‘bowrel’, which loosely translates to ‘high’.
I very much believe that hunting wild meat is the way forward towards a more sustainable future. We hunt for deer and rabbits on neighbouring properties and prepare what we’ve shot either for the staff or for special meals on those properties. It isn’t legal for us to serve wild hunted meat in the restaurant as it needs to have passed through an abattoir for processing. I believe that farming for the masses might feed a country, but wild harvesting feeds a soul. When we shoot an animal, we use every bit of meat from that animal and then take the hides to Berry to be tanned. There’s no wastage; it teaches us patience and to take only what we need at any time.
We have rifle licences but prefer to bow hunt in the forest. Sometimes it can take half a day of following an animal, in the quiet, watching its behaviour, before a shot is taken. Sometimes a shot is never taken – the animal might be with calf or be a nursing female and so we leave it.
It’s important for me to know the provenance of the animal, and to know that the last thing the creature saw and smelt was its own natural environment, its own food, its own biota, rather than the horrors of the abattoir.
‘Hunters know from experience that life lives on lives and we participate directly in the most fundamental processes of life. That is why many hunters have been and still are the foremost conservationists of wildlife and wild places.’
It concerns me when I see us putting cheap mass-produced meat into our bodies with no real care or connection, no real heart and no love. What’s happened to us? And what will happen to us in another 300 years? We should want to know and find out more about the food we eat, but as soon as it’s a piece of wild meat on a plate, people become squeamish and don’t want to know… Well, we should know: wild meat is tasty, sustainable and far, far more humanely produced than what comes from many modern farms.
I believe that we are born hunters and gatherers. To be out in the wild is one of the most pure ways to interact with nature, whether that means fly fishing in a local stream, standing waist deep in crystal clear mountain water, or walking deep through the forest to hunt fallow deer, goats and hares. Just to be out there gives a sense of freedom.
Hunting is a way to fall in love with nature. For me, it’s not about the kill, it’s about the hunt. Around the world in all cultures the urge to hunt awakens in many of us at a young age. The predatory instinct can appear spontaneously without previous experience or coaching, and in the civilised world we often hunt despite attempts to suppress the instinct. Adventure, hunting and fishing can give us that deep connection with pine forests, mountains, grasses, waterfalls, deer, rabbits, berries, plants and each other. Hunting can also teach us intelligence, patience and to respect the power of nature.
Hunting reminds us to think with our heart instead of our heads. We learn where our food is coming from and what it has eaten. We learn to respect it and not produce and take more than we need. No hunter revels in the death of the animal. Hunters know from experience that life lives on lives and we participate directly in the most fundamental processes of life. That is why many hunters have been and still are the foremost conservationists of wildlife and wild places.
