Traditional Game Sauce

When preparing a concentrated game stock, there is sometimes enough meat from the bones to make a tasty sauce. I had six kilo (twelve pounds) bones of hare and deer. When I had strained the stock I had almost one kilo of cooked meat. Being Dutch, I wouldn’t think of throwing that away. It was too much to feed it all to the cats, so I made this delicious pepper sauce with it.
However, to get that leftover meat, you’ll have to pick over the bones very carefully after having strained the stock. The gristle has become quite gelatinous, and small pieces of bone will come loose too. Feel with your bare fingers to avoid breaking your molar over a tiny piece of bone.

Main course for 4 persons; preparation in advance 15 minutes; preparation 40 minutes.

450 gr (1 pound)cooked game meat
50 gr (2 oz.) bacon, chopped
1 onion, sliced
200 gr (3 cups) mushrooms, sliced
1 dl (3 fl. oz.) Madeira
2½ dl (1 cup) game stock
40 gr (2½ Tbsp) butter
40 gr (⅓ cup) flour
pepper and salt to taste

Preparation in advance

Separate the meat from the bones.

Preparation

Fry the bacon, add butter, then fry the sliced onion on very low fire for fifteen minutes. Add mushrooms, fry until the liquid from the mushrooms has evaporized. Pour the Madeira in the pan, let that also almost evaporize (to about one tablespoon of syrupy liquid). Add flour, stir well. Then add the heated concentrated game stock a little at the time. Keep stirring. Now add the cooked game meat that has been chopped small, let simmer for another fifteen minutes on a very low fire. Taste the sauce, then add pepper and salt and whatever you want, but taste it first!

Serveren

Serve with mashed potatoes and fried celeriac (or another vegetable of choice).

Fried celeriac

When making the game stock you used a piece of celeriac, so now you’re stuck with the rest of the root. Celeriac happens to be an underestimated vegetable. Mostly it is used in salads, but try this to accompany the pepper sauce: Cut the celeriac into thick slices, cut these in triangles. Dip them in milk, then in flour, and fry them a golden brown in olive oil or butter. Sprinkle some salt over the celeriac before serving.

Ingredients

All descriptions of ingredients

Madeira wine

Wine from the Portuguese island Madeira, in the Atlantic ocean. gelegen in de Atlantische Oceaan, ten Westen van de Straat van Gibraltar en ten Noorden van de Canrische eilanden. From the sixteenth century onward extra alcohol was added to the wine to make it less perishable during trans-Atlantic transportation. This as well as the prolonged exposure to high temperatures during transport, resulted in the unique taste of Madeira wine.

Recipe for Traditional Game Sauce
A game sauce with leftover game meat from making game stock.
© Author Christianne Muusers