Rooks, roasts and venison

BY JON MORGAN

John Cornish has a recipe for every anecdote in a long life as a chef, butcher - he prefers the French charcutier - piemaker and promoter of New Zealand beef, lamb and venison at European food fairs, on cruise ships and in Middle East hotels and restaurants.

A discussion about how to cook venison suddenly veers into a recipe for rooks - the original "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie".

He's talking about how wild venison is close to inedible, then has to stop to explain that not all game is like that. He grew up eating his mother's rook pie.

Rooks are pests in parts of New Zealand and a flock can devastate a grain crop in minutes, but in Yorkshire in his youth he recalls farmers keeping their own rookeries and using the birds as insect hunters. Numbers were controlled in the spring with catapult or air rifle, shooting only the fledglings. The breast meat was baked in pies with small balls of force-meat stuffing in a sauce.

"We could do the same thing here," he says. "Keep the rook numbers to a level where they would eat only the insects and not the crop and we wouldn't have to spray insecticide. I'm sure organic farmers would like that."

But back to the venison. Good quality, farm-raised venison is readily available in supermarkets, but a lot of cooks are scared of it. "They don't know how to cook it," he says. "Simplicity is the key. Don't try to change its flavour - instead, complement its natural taste."

He sets out a few basic rules. It is a lean meat that needs little cooking. Never start cooking till the meat is at room temperature. The resting period after cooking is half as long as the cooking time to allow the latent heat to penetrate and the muscles to relax.

A marinade can enhance the natural flavour, but don't use one that will overpower it and certainly not one of the caramel-dominated flavour glazes that masquerade as marinades in supermarkets. "You can create a subtle 'vive la difference' marinade with just a little wine, garlic, olive oil and black pepper and brush it on while the meat is cooking."

He has assembled a selection of recipes and recently published them in An Introduction to Venison Cuisine, an update of a book that first appeared in 1982. They cover pasties, pies, sausages, grills, barbecues, stirfrys, casseroles, roasts, sauces and marinades.

Now 73, and still involved in the trade as an adviser to Hawke's Bay- based exporter Firstlight Foods, he first trained as a chef on the island of Jersey. He later qualified as a butcher. With these twin skills he describes himself as a charcutier, a chef who is expert in the craft of smoking and curing delicatessen meats and in specialist meat butchery. He also bears another mark of the veteran butcher, a missing finger joint, courtesy of a mincer cleaning accident.

Speaking of Jersey reminds him of ormers, the local version of paua, and he recites with relish a recipe for the shellfish delicacy (see recipes below).

He and wife Noreen came to New Zealand in 1964 after an offer to take over the butchery he worked in, in Jersey, was withdrawn in favour of the owner's relative. "I was so disgusted I wanted to get as far from Jersey as possible," he says.

They ended up in Hastings at the Hastings Travelodge restaurant, just as it was getting its liquor licence and becoming Hawke's Bay's first licensed restaurant. He was chef and manager for a few years, then alternated between cheffing and butchery at other workplaces before buying a butchery at Stortford Lodge in 1974.

His specialty was English smallgoods and he quickly built up a strong fan base. He made pork pies, chicken pies, faggots, pease pudding, black pudding French style with apple, and haggis (No 1 rule with haggis: never mince or grind the meat, it has to be hand-chopped to retain the juices). They were so popular batches were sold out before they were made. He was also taking custom from the Richmond meat plant's butchery. "They came to me and said: 'This is ridiculous. Even our own staff are coming to you instead of buying meat from us. You'll have to come and work for us'."

So he did. He spent the next 20 years there, retiring at 65 in 2002. He became manager of Richmond's two retail shops and helped the company with its research and development. During the 1980s he developed, ready- to-eat meals, such as curried lamb and beef bolognese, and is disappointed the company never took the opportunity to sell them outside its two shops.

Another item he developed was the "farm burger". He puts its success down to a cunning marketing placement. "I was aiming to get the Heart Foundation tick for a low-fat burger, and at the first analysis found it was just outside the 10 per cent margin. It would have been easy enough to remove a bit more fat to make it but it would have taken something from the flavour. I knew it was a good burger - it tasted good but only needed 30 seconds each side on the grill - and I refused to move.

"It was as healthy as you could get and still keep its flavour. But we worried that if we marketed it on its health benefits it wouldn't sell. It's the old story, don't tell them it's good for them and they'll eat the lot. Without exaggeration, we must have sold millions of them."

In the '90s the company became more pro-active in overseas markets. He developed export dishes - such as spare ribs in sauce - and became involved in packaging design and promotional material.

Farmed venison was also arriving on the market and he and three colleagues formed a venison division at Richmond. They created a range of the venison cuts in common use today, concentrating on using all the carcass, and set up a carcass grading system.

His expertise was also put to use promoting meat dishes overseas and for 10 years he travelled the world. His visits to the Middle East, particularly to the Gulf states, were so common his nickname in the region was al Bedouine. He became a favourite of the food-loving Arabs, working alongside their chefs in restaurants in Kuwait and a restaurant in Saudi Arabia so big it used 100 New Zealand lambs a day, judging venison and lamb cooking competitions at a Gulf food fair in Dubai and presenting tastings in supermarkets. He was the first European allowed to work in the Abu Dhabi butchers market and at Dubai's Burj al Arab, the world's only seven- star hotel, he introduced the chefs to New Zealand farmed venison.

Back home, one night while serving venison dishes at an International Wine and Food Society dinner in Napier he was presented with a merit award from the Federation of Wine and Food Societies of New Zealand, only the second time the award had been made.

What he regards as the biggest vote of confidence in his cooking abilities, however, came at the Anuga Food Fair in Germany, when a high-ranking Saudi religious leader chose him to prepare his meal. The reason why he, a non-Muslim, was so accepted in the Middle East was because his cooking and butchery skills and dedicated observance of the Islamic dietary laws, set him aside. "In Kuwait, for example, I taught the butchers how to break down lamb carcasses without a cleaver and how to cook the improved cuts that resulted."

This boast was put to the test one day in Abu Dhabi. The Emirates state was having a problem with unscrupulous traders labelling thawed frozen meat as the more expensive chilled NZ lamb and proposed the only way to stop this was to ban all chilled imports. This would have stopped a lucrative trade for New Zealand and Mr Cornish stepped in to say that it was possible to tell the difference between the two meats.

He taught the government's inspectors and demonstrated that because frozen meat's cell structure was broken and chilled meat's was not, liquid ran out of the frozen meat when it was pressed.

When he retired from Richmond he joined Firstlight, then a new company started by a former Richmond venison pioneer, Gerard Hickey. He became resident chef and adviser, creating recipes and promoting venison in Europe and the United States. The fledgling company ran on a shoestring. Before their first presentation at the big chain of natural and organic food stores Whole Foods, he and Mr Hickey spent the night making up venison meatballs in their hotel room.

Venison is a new meat developed by New Zealand farmers and processors, but a lot of education is needed before it can reach its true potential, he says. Its butchery is a world away from lamb and beef, with the removal of connective tissues and the silverskin surrounding muscles needed so it can be cut across the grain for the best cooking quality.

"For cooks, it is consistent and dependable across all cuts and all animals. They just have to know how to cook it - I liken it to using a microwave oven as opposed to a gas oven, you have to relearn what you've been taught. Keep it simple is the best advice." That starts him on another tangent - a recipe for slow cooked roast beef (see recipes).

Farming has also been part of his life. "I haven't been frightened to put my money where my mouth is," he says. "But I've been a Queen St farmer, preferring to invest rather than get my hands dirty."

Not all have been profitable, he admits, though he picked the right time to get out of deer farming before the bubble burst earlier this decade.

He still has plans. He wants to run a course to teach people how to make the English smallgoods that proved so popular at his '70s butchery. However, education funding cuts have forced the closure of his "pot and cook" classes. He taught students how to make pots in various styles and then how to use them to cook dishes to match. The most popular was a terracotta cooking dish, known as cassoulet in France, cazuela in Spain and tajine in Morocco.

An Introduction to Venison Cuisine is available at Moore Wilson stores or by emailing john.cornish@clear.net.nz Cost $20.

MORSELS FROM JOHN CORNISH'S KITCHEN

John's easy plum rack of venison

One venison rack of five ribs

100g plum jam

100ml cider vinegar

1/4 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp coarse-ground black pepper

2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped

Salt

Cooking oil

In a microwave dish, heat together plum jam, vinegar and chilli until completely melted into one another, remove and allow to cool. This can be prepared the day before.

Heat oven to 230 degrees Celsius, rub venison rack with black pepper, garlic, oil and a little salt. Try to keep the bones as clean as possible. Place rack in a roasting dish, cook for 10 minutes, or eight minutes if you prefer it very rare. Remove the meat from the oven, allow to rest for 10 minutes in a warm place covered with foil. Brush with glaze, and return to the oven for five minutes to warm the meat and caramelise the glaze.

Ormer casserole

Paua

Flour

Oil

Butter

Garlic

Carrot

Onion

Still cider

Wash the paua clean and beat flat with a mallet. Dust in flour and pan- fry in a mixture of oil and butter. Place paua in a casserole dish with a close-fitting lid. Add garlic, carrots and onions and cover with the cider. Make a flour-and-water paste and seal the lid down. Cook at no more than 90C for a minimum of eight hours.

John's roast beef

Cube roll of beef or any other boneless cut of beef

Preheat oven to 250C then put in the beef roll. Wait for the oven to come back up to 250C and cook for 10 minutes per kilogram. Turn the oven off and do not open the door for four hours. The result will be a roast with a crusty brown exterior and pink inside.

Chicken and olive tajine

1kg chicken thighs, skinned

6 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp Baharat spice mix

1 preserved lemon

100g pitted green or black olives

100g dried apricots

500ml chicken stock

250ml white wine

Olive oil

Salt

Crush and chop three cloves of garlic and combine with the Baharat. Rub this mix into the chicken pieces and set aside for an hour if you have time. Peel the lemon and chop the peel into small dice. Do the same with the olives and apricots.

In a frying pan, heat a little of the oil and gently cook the chicken for about 10 minutes. Remove the chicken to a terracotta dish and keep warm. Add to the frypan the diced olives, lemons and apricots and chopped garlic. Saute these in the crusty pieces in the pan, add the stock and wine, bring to the boil and reduce the liquid by about a third. Pour this over the chicken. Cook the chicken in a 175C oven for about 40 minutes. The sauce should have reduced some more. It will now need a little seasoning. Serve with a side dish of buttered couscous, green salad and flatbreads.

Baharat

1/2 cup black peppercorns

1/4 cup coriander seeds

1/2 cup cassia bark

1/4 cup cloves

1/2 cup cumin seeds

1 Tbsp cardamom seeds

4 whole nutmegs, smashed with a hammer

2/3 cup paprika

1 Tbsp chilli powder

2 Tbsp lemon or lime powder.

Heat all but the lime powder in a heavy frypan until fragrant (don't burn). Grind the spices, add the lemon powder, pass through a sieve to blend and remove any unground pieces (they may need regrinding). Store in an airtight container.

- © Fairfax NZ News