So the problem of substituting for prickly pear juice was on my mind all day. I thought maybe the pickled nopales in the sauce would do something close to what should happen, but the taste of the juice to sweeten the sauce was a harder thought. I could have gone to get some watermelon, I suppose, but in the end I decided to take a hard last turn away from the sauce that Miller’s book calls for. The base of the sauce is a brown meat stock, dried mushrooms, ancho chiles, fresh thyme, bay leaves, fresh sage, fresh juniper berries, garlic, then reduced; after reduction, you add fresh prickly pear chopped, then food mill it and then after that you add the juice.
So I did the reduction pretty much as is with some nopales added—I took out the juniper and sage since they’re in the marinade strongly and I’m going to grill the venison over more sage and rosemary and I didn’t want the sauce to be too herbal or aromatic.
I tasted it to be sure it was good for what I had in mind, and then went ahead and added some smoked peaches that were the first thing I grilled tonight. Then I milled it down again. I can’t speak to what the sauce is like if you do everything by the book, but I think I’d be willing to put my version up against that one and wager on myself—the smoked peaches had a really distinct presence in the sauce and I honestly think they complimented the very aromatic marinated venison. It was maybe the best sauce I’ve made in years? I wish there had been more to put it on.
Otherwise, this is all pretty simple: the venison goes on the grill, the quail go in the fryer. I cut a few greens from the garden for the quail. If you have access to all the ingredients called for by these recipes, it’s no big deal, but if you do, you probably live somewhere between Austin and Los Angeles. Everywhere else, even in this bougie food culture, some of this takes some work to get.
The venison, I have to say, was really damn good. The quail too, but not as good. The venison was pretty close to “I went to a restaurant” good. The marinated flavors on both were distinct and went deep into the meat.
All good, well, except for the tamales. I apologize to abuelas everywhere but if I’m gonna make tamales they gotta be my main focus, because I don’t do it that often and I have zero technique. I made them, but they didn’t steam at all enough and they were basically inedibly uncooked, though I think the tastes would have worked well with the venison sauce. 100% my screw-up—essentially entirely about inattention during the process. You can see the absolutely ugly outcome in the first picture—I was too busy with the grill and the fryer to see that the steam wasn’t going into the steamer enough.
Not because of the tamales, I’m going to come back to this book again next week. Miller’s recipes didn’t do wrong by me, I just want one more go-round. So I’m going to do a mussels with chipotle recipe that really caught my eye, and nothing else, so my focus is on that clearly.
When I do tamales with any book, I’m going to be focused on that. It’s been too long since I made them and when I make them they need to be the star.
VERDICT: One more week, mostly because I enjoyed cooking this and I see another recipe I want to do.