Venison is delicious, unusual and incredibly good for you. Thanks to companies like Donald Russell (http://www.donaldrussell.com) and Blackface (http://www.blackface.co.uk), both online butchers based in Scotland, it is now incredibly easy to place an order on the internet and have a box of steaks arrive on your doorstep a few days later. What's more, it is better value than beef at the moment.



Steak au poivre may be a seventies cult dish, but there are reasons why dishes become cult in the first place. The creamy sauce laced with the flavour of brandy and dark, rich-scented peppercorns feels incredibly luxurious, especially if you pair it with venison instead of the more usual beef. It may be a simple dish but it tastes a million dollars.

Venison au Poivre for Two

Preparation time: 5-10 minutes

Cooking time: 5-10 minutes

Ingredients:

? 1 tbsp each of black and whitepeppercorns

? 4 venison medallions

? 30g butter

? ? onion or 2 baby shallots

? 1/4 beef stock cube

? 100ml brandy

? 150ml water

? 75ml cr'me fraiche

TIP:

The secret is to take the steaks out of the fridge about 10 minutes before you cook them so that they can come up to room temperature. Then, the only other must is to get your pan (a heavy-bottomed frying-pan is ideal) smoking hot before you even add fat to it. That way you can really sear the steak at the highest temperature possible.

Up to two hours before you are ready to eat, crush the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and press them into the medallions. The pestle and mortar gives the peppercorns the perfect texture for this dish, but if you don't have one, put the peppercorns into a hard-wearing plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin. Leave the meat aside for the pepper flavour to penetrate the meat. Pre-heat the oven to 60C and put in two plates to warm.

Five minutes before you are ready to eat, heat a large heavy-bottomed frying-pan until it is smoking hot and then add half the butter. When the butter is sizzling (the pan should now be extremely hot), add the medallions and cook on one side for 2 minutes (if the medallions are thin you could cook for less - say 90 seconds), before turning and cooking for a further 60-90 seconds.

Venison is very lean so is best eaten rare or it tends to get dry and chewy. When eaten rare the meat is so tender that it is almost like biting through butter. It will continue cooking in the oven while it rests so put the medallions on one of the plates whilst you make the sauce.

Add the rest of the butter to the pan, turn it down to a medium heat and add the shallots and stock cube. Sweat for five minutes so that the shallots soften but do not colour before pouring in the brandy and water to de-glaze the pan. Simmer the juices rapidly for a few minutes before turning the heat right down and stirring in the cr'me fraiche.

Simmer for a few minutes more to reduce the cr'me fraiche and check for seasoning Serve with a crisp, green salad and some small, waxy potatoes that you can either roast until crisp in the oven, or steam until tender. It is delicious accompanied with some kind of jelly like rosehip, quince or redcurrant.