We are absolutely loving finding recipes from the Game and Garden lady, and trying them out in our kitchen! For Valentine's Day, they enjoyed this recipe which we made last night! When you put all of this together and finally sit down to eat, the smell in the house alone is a give-away to the delightful dish you're getting ready to enjoy! The entire house smells like chocolate coffee, with a fabulous sweet berry topping! Not to mention there are no onions or garlic to chop, so the delicious smell lasts on your hands as well (it's like having a chocolate lotion-YUM)! Now, we did ours a tiny bit different than her's because we had slightly different ingredients in our pantry. So let's get started!
Ingredients
1/3 c coffee grounds
(I didn't realize until it was too late that I make vanilla coffee...didn't matter! Still tasted wonderful)
1/4 c cocoa
(We used dark chocolate cocoa powder)
1 TB brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 loin
(I didn't have a venison loin. I did however have butterflied back straps. Which worked great!)
If you don't have venison, don't fret...I would use a pork loin!
Olive oil for browning
Mix together all the ingredients to make your dry rub. I sprinkled the rub over the meat, and pushed down to make sure it was thoroughly coated! Make sure all sides of the meat are covered in the dry rub mix.
Once you have each piece (or loin) covered in the dry rub, get a skillet out and add some olive oil to the pan for browning the meat. You are going to want to get your pan "smoking hot"! Once our skillet was smoking, we placed the meat in one piece at a time to brown on both sides! (I think since we used dark chocolate and coffee-It looked completely seared or charred! It wasn't. Just make sure you keep an eye on it!) Once you have your meat browned, you're going to want to put it in a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes!
Meanwhile let's talk about the berry sauce! Here are the ingredients...
Ingredients
1 1/2 c blackberries
1/2 c blueberries
1/2 c red wine
1/4 c sugar
1 lemon-juiced
salt to taste
Place all your ingredients in a small sauce pot on the stove, and bring to a boil! Reduce the heat and reduce the sauce by half!
At some point during the sauce making, your venison will be done in the oven. Carefully remove the pan, and let it cool for a couple of minutes. I sliced mine into small strips, if you have a loin like the recipe link above (or right here) you can cut it into small rounds. Make a bed of spinach (or arugula) to add everything to on a plate!
Once your sauce is finished and removed from the heat, here are my step-by-step instructions as to how I put this all together:
1) Add bed of spinach to my plate
2) Take the strips of meat and dip each one in a Raspberry Chipotle sauce.
3) Add meat to top of spinach
4) Spoon berry sauce over the top like a delicious salad dressing
5) ENJOY!
I think this is one of my new favorite dishes! If you've been unsure about trying venison, I would recommend starting with something like this! There was no "game" flavor whatsoever, and the meat was so tender it practically falls apart in the first bite! The chocolate and coffee flavors are wonderful together! Then when you pair it with the tiny bit of a spicy kick you get from the dipping sauce, and then pair that with the sweet berry sauce, it's a completely unbelievable, melt-in your mouth kind of taste! This is why we love cooking from the Game and Garden site, because she has so many recipes to choose from, and they are ALL so tasty!
Until Next Time...
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