Deer Lung Rempah

This recipe continues my posts on using as much of the deer we caught for food. I've looked all over for deer lung recipes but came up with nothing. You can of course, just grind it up with other meats into a burger or lunch meat or scrapple of some sort. But I decided that I wanted to try it on its on. So, I went back to my roots - Malay style beef lungs. If you want the original recipe for Paru Goreng, you can follow this link. My recipe is inspired by that but simpler.

I used a basic rempah for the seasoning. Rempah is basically a mix of spices that can be wet or dry. I added blachan, which is a fermented then dried shrimp paste or powder. It may also be called terasi (Indonesia), gapi (Thailand), bagoong (Philippines) and balichǎo (Macao). Thanks for Uncle Phil for the information.You should be able to get this in a well stocked Asian grocer.

The lungs turned out to be very good. Not at all game-y, and is similar to the deer heart.

Ingredients:

Deer or beef lungs (approx 2 lbs)
1/2 Tbsp blachan
Salt and fish sauce to taste

Rempah
2 sticks of lemon grass
1 piece of galangal about 3ins
2 tsp of balchan
3-4 tsp corainder powder
1 large onion.

Method





In a large enough sauce pan or pot, bring water to a boil. Add the lungs and simmer for a few hours, until soft. When done, cut into slices.

In a processor, course grind the onion. Remove and fry it until translucent. Return to processor and add the other rempah ingredients. Grind to a paste. You can use this base for curry as well by adding curry powder to the mix.

Use about 3-4 Tbsp of the rempah. Fry the rempah and blachan in a pan until fragrant. Add the lung slices. Add salt and fish sauce to taste. Serve on its own or with rice.

Uzbek Palov

Someone gave me this recipe and it's very good. It's prepared in one pot which I like and reminds me of fried rice. It requires A LOT of oil but the end result doesn't taste oily. Just buttery and delicious! Lamb is traditional but I used venison.

Ingredients

1 lb venison or beef or lamb (traditional), cubed
5 carrots, peeled and julienned
1 c dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
3.5 c long grained rice, washed until water runs clear
1 large onion, peeled and sliced thin
1 c butter
8 c boiling water
Salt & cumin to taste
1 clove of garlic, outer skin peeled

Method

Melt the butter in a dutch oven over medium heat. When hot, add the meat. The meat should sizzle and brown. Add onions and cook until caramelized. Add carrots and chickpeas. Cook until softened. Add rice and boiling water and allow to boil. Lower the garlic head in the middle of the pot. Lower the heat, cover and allow the dish to simmer on low heat until the rice is cooked. Season to taste.

Remove the garlic head and mix the ingredients in the pot before serving.

Venison Meat Balls

OK. So I was inspired by Ikea's Swedish Meatballs so I decided to make my own with venison and pork. They're charging "only" $9.99 for a frozen box that feeds a family of 4. $10 for a home cooked meal's pretty expensive. I wasn't impressed with the price so I made my own and came up with enough meatballs for 5 family meals at a fraction of the price.

The resulting meat balls are very versatile. I have used them for my copycat Ikea Swedish Meatballs, sweet & sour meat balls and spaghetti and meatballs.

Ingredients

2 lbs ground chuck venison (or beef)
1 lb ground pork
3/4 c milk
1/4 c breadcrumbs
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 c dried onion flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
Butter or oil for pan frying

Method

Since my venison was processed and frozen as chunks, I pulsed it in the food processor until roughly minced. See why it's better to grind your own beef anyway.

Add all the other ingredients except the butter/oil and process until well mixed. In a pan, heat butter/oil over medium heat. Cook a bit of the meat mixture until done then re-season the raw meat to taste if necessary.

It is easy to make regular sized meatballs with your hands:

Use a spoon to make the final scoop off your hand.

Make all the meatballs. Then in the heated pan, pan-fry all sides until done. I find that pan-frying is better than baking as it locks the juices in rather than drying the meat out.

Dim Sum-Style Braised Deer Tripe

This requires time to prepare. You can buy beef tripe from Asian and Mexican grocers. I have even seen big packs sold at both Walmart and Sam's Club for about $5. I believe they are all bleached.

Obviously, the tripe from our deer was green tripe so it had to be cleaned and washed well. The best way to wash it (after cleaning) is to use rock salt (I just used sea salt). This will result in a grey-ish looking tripe. Without bleaching, I don't think you can get it looking white like those available commercially.

Next, boil the tripe in salted water for about 4-5 hours, with a couple of changes of salt water in between. I have to warn you that this whole process is, well strong-smelling. "Barn-y" if you will - it will STINK.

Towards the end of the boiling, the smell will dissappear and leave what I call the 'tripe-y' smell. It's hard to describe what this smell is, you'll recognize it if you've grown up eating it.

After boiling, allow to cool and slice it into thin strips.

The following it revised from a braised beef recipe I found online. You can follow the ingredients exactly from that recipe but I used what I had on hand.

Since I had neither Hoisin sauce nor much soy sauce left, this is my version of the recipe.

Ingredients

Deer (or beef) tripe, cleaned, cooked and sliced thin

Oil  

Sauce

Dark soy sauce

Black bean sauce or paste

Sugar

Honey

Molasses

Shaoxing Wine (or dry sherry)

A few drops of Sriracha chili sauce 

Garlic powder

Garlic, peeled and minced

1 star anise

Black whole peppercorns

Five spice powder

Carrots, peeled and chopped

Chicken Stock

Salt

Corn starch (for thickening)

Cilantro (for garnish)

Method

Saute the tripe in hot oil in a dutch oven. Add the black bean sauce/paste and mix well. Add the chicken stock and the rest of the ingredients except the salt and corn starch. 

Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Allow to simmer for 4-5 hours. When everything is cooked and soft, add salt if necessary. To thicken the gravy, add water to corn starch in a separate bowl (never add corn starch to water as it will be VERY difficult to mix).  Mix until you get a paste. Add it to the stew and allow it to simmer until thickened.

Serve over rice or egg noodles and garnish with cilantro.