My darling husband bestowed upon me a most wonderful Christmas gift this year. Knowing my passion for food and cooking said food, he bought me Jamie Oliver’s first cookbook and I truly love it. Reading through the pages, I can almost hear his fantastic accent talking about finding the ripest grape tomatoes for your roasted tomato salad. Everything dealing with fresh meats, herbs and produce is “brilliant” to him. I have to admit, I have a foody crush on Jamie. He just makes everything edible sound so… delectable. I bestowed upon myself a new slow cooker that was on clearance at Wegmans. I’ve been wanting one for the longest time and there it was sitting all alone on the shelf, the only one of it’s kind. I had to have it and I think that even Kofi is glad that I splurged this time. After reading all of the instructions (which admittedly were not extensive) I planned a new and exciting meal for the following day. I took the bag of venison stew meat out of the freezer and put it in the fridge so that it would be thawed by yesterday morning. The recipe was for rabbit, but since I had venison in the freezer from my parents, I figured it wouldn’t be too weird to substitute. The following is the recipe with a couple alterations from the original. Mr. Oliver would approve, I think, since he altered his recipes from the originals that he’d used in restaurants. I used the slow cooker where he uses a roasting pan, but the results were fantastic.

1 – 1 and a half pounds of venison stew meat
1 large leek (sliced into think pieces)
4 large potatoes (cut into four pieces each)
1 heaping tblspn of thyme
1 heaping tblspn of rosemary
1 heaping tblspn of sage
2 tblspns of lime juice
1 cup of white wine
2 tblspns of butter
1 tblspn of olive oil
salt and pepper as you like
4 cloves of garlic (whole)
3 -4 cups of water

Put everything into the slow cooker(4 quart), cover and turn to low for 8 hours. Go about your day. By the fifth hour the kitchen started to smell pretty amazing from the herbs, leeks and meat. There was a lot of liquid, which is good because venison is such a lean meet that it needs quite a bit of liquid to keep it from being tough. When it was time to eat, the leeks and garlic melted like butter in our mouths and the venison was soooo tender. The potatoes were perfect, not too soft and not too hard. Kofi especially loved the broth, which we both drank from our bowls with gusto after the rest of the meal was gone. I love my slow cooker and I love my new cookbook. I am eagerly planning future meals and desserts with the Naked Chef.