Fall Recipe Feature: Venison Tartare
This post was written by Chef Simon, Executive Restaurants Chef at Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.
Feeling adventurous? Impress your guests at your next dinner party with this delicious venison tartare appetizer. Tartare is a classic dish that is popular worldwide. While it's often featured on fine dining menus, it can be replicated at home.
This dish is centered around the very lean venison and is balanced with the creaminess and richness of the duck yolk. The confit onion is torched, giving the dish some sweetness and smokiness. There's some acidity to the macerated chive and the dish has the expected mustard flavor that you would expect from a tartare. Instead of serving it with the typical crostini, this dish features rosti as the starch and the vessel for the tartare. It is finished off with peppery micro-greens.
"Every ingredient in this dish is Canadian. Most of the ingredients are locally sourced and the venison was raised in Alberta," says Chef Simon. "The best part about this dish is that you can create your own experience out of it - you can choose which aspects of it you'd like to make more dominant by the combination of ingredients on your fork."
We hope you can join us at the Walliser Stube this winter to sample this dish.
Ingredients:
Valaisanne Rosti
1 Yukon potato
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp canola oil
Venison
2 oz venison striploin, small diced
1 cornichon, brunoise
1 tbsp olive oil
1 pinch smoked salt
Confit Shallot
1 shallot, halved
1 tbsp duck fat
Macerated Chive
10 stems of macerated chive
1 oz sherry vinegar
1 tsp grainy mustard
Duck Egg
1 duck egg
1 tsp butter
1 tsp smoked salt Method:
To make the rosti, steam the Yukon potato with the skin on for 15-20 minutes.
Once cooled, use the large dye on a cheese grater and shred the potato.
Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and mix.
Form into 3" circles no higher than 1/2."
Add butter and canola oil to a pan low-med heat.
Once the butter dissolves add the rosti to sear. Once golden brown on one side, flip and cook the other side to the same consistency. Remove and set aside.
Finely dice the venision striploin.
Combine the venison with the olive oil and smoked salt. Mix well for even distribution and set aside.
Submerge the shallot in duck fat in a pan on low heat and cook until tender.
Remove the shallot from oil and dry, then coarsely chop and set aside.
Coarsely chop the chive and add to a bowl with sherry vinegar and grainy mustard. For best results vacuum pack this mixture - that will allow the vinegar to cook the chives at a more rapid rate. Otherwise set the mixture aside for one hour.
Once the mixture is ready, using a food processor pulse blend the ingredients while slowly adding approximately 2 oz of the residual oil from the shallot confit and set aside.
Crack the duck egg into a pan and cook sunny-side up until the white is no longer translucent. Finished with smoked salt.
Place the egg over top the rosti.
Place the confit shallot atop the tartare mix
Place the macerated chive next to each set and garnish with the peppery micro greens. (If you have a cooking torch, you can torch set the chive first).
Serve and enjoy!
Blessings,
Chef Simon
