Mongolian venison with vegetable loaded parsnip rice

You may know by now that I'm travelling the culinary world from the comfort of my kitchen, cooking and trying food from around the world. My aim is to try meals from 52 countries this year, on average one per week. Today we went to Mongolia for the main part of our dinner. The venison was topped up with homemade springrolls that I found in the freezer and parsnip rice with colourful vegetables in.

If you have ever read any of my blogs before, you will know that if the recipe calls for beef, I will use venison. We normally have a freezer full of it, as my partner is a hunter in a deer management team. This time I used leg steaks from a red deer, the largest kind of deer in the UK (as far as I know). It was beautifully tender, although the glaze was a little bit too soy saucy for my liking. Don't get me wrong, I love soy sauce. It was however a bit too dark. Next time I may use light soy sauce instead. Yes, there will definitely be a next time. Apart from the intense soy flavour, it was a lovely meal.

It was also a quick dinner to cook, perfect for a weekday evening when you may be too tired to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. A little bit of faff, which I'm not really a fan of, but nothing too bad. I would like to warn about sticky fingers though. Perhaps utensils could be used for the sticky part, but I'm a hands on kind of cook and although I can't bear messy hands, that's what I opted for this time.

For once, when the recipe said don't over crowd the pan, I didn't. That's probably why the meat cooked the way it was supposed to. How strange. Follow a recipe and it comes out alright... Perhaps I should do that more often. 

I found the recipe for Super Easy Mongolian Beef on Pinterest, shared by 'The recipe critic - tried & true. Yes, it was super easy and if tasty means true, I'm bound to agree. I only had half the amount of meat, so I halved the original recipe.

For the Mongolian meat, you need:

600 g beef or venison, sliced thin

1/8 cup corn flour

olive oil for frying

1/4 cup soy sauce (I recommend light or a mixture of light and dark)

1/4 cup brown sugar (I was out of brown, so I used white)

1/8 cup water

1 tsp ginger, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

a pinch of red chilli flakes

green onion for garnish, chopped

For the parsnip rice, you need:

500 g parsnips, blitzed into rice

2 carrots, cut into tiny sticks

1 pepper, sliced

a chunk of cabbage, shredded

2 spring onions, chopped

1. Get everything out for the meat.

2. Finely chop ginger and garlic. 

3. Mix soy sauce, water, ginger and garlic in a bowl.

4. Slice the meat finely.

5. Place the meat in a bag and add the corn flour. Shake to coat the meat. 

6. If you want to serve with parsnip rice, this is the time to get everything out.

7. Peel and cut the parsnips into chunks and blitz into rice in a food processor. You can grate them if you don't have a handy gadget.

8. Chop and slice the vegetables that are going into the rice.

9. Stir fry the vegetables, but leave a little bite to make the dish more interesting.

10. While the vegetables are cooking, start frying the meat in a single layer. Don't over crowd the pan. I normally do, but I didn't this time and it came out perfect.

11. Flip the meat over once it starts browning. Don't over cook it. 

12. Put the first batch aside and cook the rest. Keep going until you have cooked all of it.

13. While the meat is cooking, season the vegetables with whatever you fancy. As there was a lot of flavour in the meat dish, I opted for a few drops of sesame oil in the vegetables, alongside salt and pepper. That was quite enough.

14. Add the parsnip rice and mix well.

15. Leave to cook for a few minutes and do a taste test. Adjust the seasoning if needed.

16. Pour the marinade in the same frying pan you used for the meat and cook for a few minutes until it thickens. Add the chilli flakes.

17. Add the cooked meat and mix to coat every piece.

18. Sprinkle with the chopped spring onion.

19. Dish up and enjoy. 

Like I said earlier, I found a couple of spring rolls in the freezer and they were warmed up in the oven. They were a nice addition to the meal and made it feel like a take away.