Browning poor little Bambi

Karoostew

YOU’RE cooking Bambi. She says this with clear eyes and a disbelieving look. “You do realise that’s Bambi you’re cooking?” I know the look, and I know the voice.

It was the same look, and the same tone, that I had been met with three years ago when we were enjoying a splendid dinner at The Ledbury, a very fine restaurant in London’s Notting Hill. Set before me was a plate of medallions of fallow deer, near a mound of what contemporary chefs like to call “soil”. I scoured the soil for clues as to its provenance. I could find no spoor of anything that had scurried by while said fallow deer was being hunted down. No tell- tale paw prints. No discernible droppings. It was safe to lift knife and fork.

I was savouring the first morsel when I caught her looking at me in That Way. Uh-oh. “What?” “Is that Bambi?” “It’s fallow deer.” “Thought so. Bambi.” “Could be,” I shrugged. “Sure tastes nice.”

Now I’m in Cradock three years later and two sirloins – whole fillets, much like beef fillet – of, um, fallow deer have been delivered to me. I am eyeing them in the way that an executioner sizes up a man he is about to put to death, deciding exactly where the axe will fall. I feel eyes burning into the back of my head. “What?” “Isn’t that Bambi?” “Oh … um. No no no, this is takbok.”

This said with confidence, because takbok is what I was offered, takbok is what I bought, and takbok was what I was about to cook. If it makes anyone feel better by calling it a hardy, down-on-theplaas name, rather than a cute, give-it-a-cuddle name, takbok it is.

“Definitely takbok, that’s what the guy said. But, um, ja, I think it is also sometimes called fallow deer.” Then, as an afterthought, “Probably not precisely the same species though. Not anything like those pretty northern hemisphere ones.” I googled images of it. “See? Ugly-looking thing.” “That’s Bambi.” She’s seeing Bambi caught in the fireglow as the forest blaze approaches.

Poor widdle Bambi, all cute and cuddly and butter-wouldn’t-melt.

I’m seeing butter melting in a frying pan and a slab of Bambi being browned all over, sizzling and oozing flavour.

In the pan Bambi goes, without so much as a whimper.

Turns out fallow deer and what on South Africa’s platteland are called takbokke are one and the same thing, but let’s keep this between ourselves. They have enormous curly horns seemingly in excess of their bodies’ ability to carry them, and their meat is compact and lean.

Here’s the beauty of them: they (or at least the loins) take no time at all to cook. I had planned to first brown the fillet and then cook it in a 180°C oven for 15 to 20 minutes, but an instinct told me to merely brown it, and then wrap it in foil and keep it in the warmer drawer until needed. That was an instinct worth trusting, because the meat was perfectly rare and tender, and all that was left to be done was to slice it into slim medallions and make a sauce to spoon over the slivers.

But here in the deep Karoo, Bambi and her friends Sarel Springbok and Karl Kudu are as much a part of the landscape as ancient koppies and trucks of forlorn sheep trundling past, and their meat is a beautiful thing for the cook who respects a piece of meat.

I have long left behind me the days when I thought that all veni- son was a thing you had to slowcook with red wine and juniper berries and garlic, a method which masks the flavour of the meat. It can take a little spice, and something sweet, but it needs little more than this. There’s no need for Bambi to die twice.

I haven’t yet cooked kudu since arriving in Cradock, but I don’t doubt that it is coming. For now, my tally is warthog and now fallow deer/takbok/Bambi. And the cook is not a heartless creature. An animal, whether Bambi, Sarel, Karel, Babe or Shaggy Sheep, has died for the pot, and its meat must be treated with thoughtfulness and a little art.

Or, in the case of this loin of fallow deer, with restraint, to allow the meat’s own flavour to triumph. All I did was season with salt and pepper, roll in dried oregano, and panfry all over in butter until well-browned.

The sweetness comes in the sauce. Once the meat has been browned and wrapped in foil and left in the warmer drawer to relax for 10 minutes or so, deglaze the same pan with red wine and a sweet fortified wine such as Old Brown sherry, or a port, jerepigo or red muscadel. The ratio should be roughly two parts dry red wine to one part sweet wine. Season carefully with salt and pepper, reduce a little on the stove top. Slice medallions of fillet and pour over some of the sauce.

Drink a toast to Bambi, Sarel, Babe, or whatever bounty of the veld you’d like to honour, and savour a true Karoo meal.

TAKBOK: Fallow deer takes next to no time to cook.