SHELLEY GOULASH

LOCAVORE Bernd Michaelsen, Danijel Mitrovic, John MacLeod, Donovan Jone, Oleg Kozlov

Regulars who attend the National Hunting Camps at Shelley in Victoria had long planned a venison dinner, but for whatever reason, it never happened. However, at the April 2023 camp, we needed a group bonding exercise, so we took the opportunity to schedule the dinner finally.

The obvious cooks for the main dish were the Danijel and Igor Mitrovic and their mate Zoran Cuckovic, who originally hail from Serbia. These guys really know how to prepare game-based meals and Balkans-style food.

Prior to camp, Danijel had suggested either Transylvanian stew or Hungarian goulash, with the latter thought easier to prepare. To convert Hungarian goulash to Shelley goulash was simply a case of substituting supermarket mushrooms for pine mushrooms.

The recipe suggested 7kg of venison to feed 16 people. That need was solved when John MacLeod emailed his Shelley mates to announce that he had shot his first deer, a red deer stag. John’s arm was twisted, and he agreed to supply the bulk of the venison required for the goulash. Donovan Jones then volunteered to supply another kilogram of rusa and chital venison.

Spices were sourced in Melbourne from a specialist store, and the bacon was home-smoked, thereby giving it a unique flavour. The cooking time for the goulash was around two hours, with preparation taking four people about 30 minutes. The key to a perfect dish is the preparation, in particular, the careful removal of connective tissue from the venison.

On the evening of the dinner, Danijel, Igor and Zoran were joined by Tony Rath, and they got stuck into food preparation, chopping and dicing the ingredients to get the goulash prepared and served within about 2.5 hours.

Without pre-dinner appetisers, life would have been pretty boring. Oleg Kozlov came to the rescue with purchased cheeses and the like, but the centrepiece of his contribution was a more-than-generous lump of sambar prosciutto. To date, Oleg has made several batches of prosciutto, mostly from sambar hindlegs, although he has also started experimenting using fallow deer venison. The sambar prosciutto tried at camp was the ‘hard’ variety, where the maximum amount of moisture has been drawn from the flesh using salt over 20 days.

Putting on the camp dinner was a lot of work but greatly appreciated by all those who benefited. Thanks also to those who donated ingredients; their contributions were most appreciated!

FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on the shelley National Hunting Camp, contact the organiser/hunt master, Bernd Michaelsen on 0419 832 995 or michaelsen@geologist.com