Potato pancakes are a lovely way to use up any leftover mashed potatoes and work really well with venison steaks and Tom’s spiced red wine sauce.
Ingredients
For the red cabbage
- ½
red cabbage, shredded - 150g/5½oz
demerara sugar - 40g/1½oz
sea salt flakes - 20
juniper berries, crushed - 50g/1¾oz
butter
For the potato pancakes
- 250g/9oz cold, dry
mashed potato - 75g/2½oz plain white
flour - 1 tsp
baking powder - 125ml/4fl oz
milk - 2 free-range
eggs - 3 tbsp
rapeseed oil
For the clove sauce
- 200ml/7fl oz
red wine - 100ml/3½fl oz
red wine vinegar - 100g/3½fl oz
redcurrant jelly - 4
cloves - 500ml/1lb 2oz
beef stock
For the venison steaks
- 50g/1¾oz
butter - 4 tbsp
rapeseed oil - 4
venison T-bone steaks (about 250g/9oz each) -
salt, to taste - ½ lemon, juice only
- 150g/5½oz
crème fraîche, to serve - 1 tsp crushed
Sichuan peppercorns - 1
lime, juice only, to serve
Method
-
Thirty minutes before you plan to cook, mix the red cabbage, demerara sugar, sea salt flakes and juniper berries together in a non-metallic bowl and leave for the cabbage to soften.
-
Meanwhile, make the potato pancakes, preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3 and then turn it off. Mix the mashed potato, flour and baking powder together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs, then stir the liquid ingredients into the potato mixture to form a batter.
-
Heat the rapeseed oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Drop spoonful of the batter into the pan and fry for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden-brown. Transfer them to the turned off oven to keep hot. You should get 12-16 pancakes from the batter.
-
To make the clove sauce, bring the red wine, red wine vinegar, redcurrant jelly and cloves to the boil in a saucepan over a high heat, stirring to dissolve the jelly. Continue boiling until the volume of liquid reduces to a glaze. Add the beef stock, return to the boil and reduce again by half to make a sauce. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bowl to remove the cloves, then set aside and keep warm.
-
For the red cabbage, rinse the cabbage thoroughly under cold running water. Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat, then add the cabbage to warm through. Do not overcook – the cabbage should still have some crunch. Keep warm until ready to serve.
-
For the venison steaks, melt the butter with the rapeseed oil in a large frying pan set over a high heat until the butter just starts to turn a hazelnut-brown colour. Season the steaks with a pinch of salt, add them to the pan and fry for 3-4 minutes on each side, or until they are a lovely dark colour. Squeeze in the lemon juice and baste the venison with the pan juices (do not overcook them, as venison has a very low fat content and can become dry). Remove the steaks from the pan and leave them to rest, covered with foil, for 10 minutes.
-
While the steaks are resting, mix together the crème fraîche, Szechuan pepper and lime juice.
-
To serve, put a couple of pancakes on each plate, add some red cabbage and a venison steak, and then pour over the clove sauce. Serve with the spiced crème fraîche on the side.