Colorado elk medallions with sour cherry sauce
We got skunked on the Colorado elk hunt this season, but Gurlfren’s dad sent us home with several packages of frozen meat from last year’s hunt. I’d never eaten elk before, much less cooked it, so the process of figuring out how to prepare it was a fun challenge.
These medallions were marked backstrap meat. Hmm… what’s that? A little internet research reveals it’s from the loin of the animal, what we’d anthropomorphically call its lower back. Check. So it’s a tender muscle that can be cooked quickly over high heat. Right. Now what?
The butcher trimmed these raw crimson medallions a bit less than 2 inches thick, and sliced a pocket into it suitable for a stuffing. Backstrap meat has very little external fat and no marbling, and barely any connective tissue: very much like a beef filet mignon. Really lean meat.
So how do I approach this? That pocket called for a big wad of herb butter made with finely minced parsley and sage from my garden. As the steak cooked, the butter melted gently and infused the lean meat with herbs. I crusted the outside of the steak with cracked black pepper & salt, seared quickly in a hot pan for a couple minutes on each side, then tossed the pan in a 400 degree oven to roast for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, I started a couscous for the starch component of the meal. Finely dice carrots & celery and add them to boiling chicken broth, and let simmer until tender, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the couscous, cover and let it sit for ten minutes to steam. Easy.
Does elk steak need a sauce? It couldn’t hurt. We brought back a locally made Colorado wine made from sour cherries. It tastes like a barely sweetened cherry pie filling, with a big fruity nose and a bitter / tart cherry flavor. When I first tasted it, I immediately thought it will make a great sauce, and it did. To add more dimension to the sauce, I bought some frozen sour cherries at my local Persian supermarket.
I pulled out the medium-rare steaks from the oven and rested them on a warm casserole while I prepared a sauce using the same pan. I deglazed the pan with chicken stock, and reduced about a cup of it to a syrup consistency. I then added roughly a cup of cherry wine and the thawed, pitted cherries and reduced again to a thick glaze. Season to taste at the end. Simple, and not overwrought.
While the cherry sauce reduced I started a sage brown butter on another burner. Melt butter over a low-medium heat, add whole fresh sage leaves until the milk solids turn brown and the sage crisps nicely. Drain off the butter and sage leaves, and reserve it. To this pan, I threw in sugar snap peas and parboiled fresh fava beans (also from the Persian market), and sauteed over medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper, and add back the browned butter at the very end as a sauce.
Verdict: elk is delicious, and not at all gamey as I expected. It’s almost like beef with a firmer texture and a slightly stronger flavor. Considering the distances these large animals migrate in the wilderness, that makes perfect sense.
Sorry I didn’t keep track of the ingredients, so no recipe for this one. For me, half the fun of cooking is envisioning the final outcome and improvising a way to get there. For the next session of You Kilt It, Now Eat It, we tackle a frozen lump of elk roast and try not to screw that up too much.
