Moose Backstrap with a Lavender Raspberry Ginger Sauce
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Humans have five taste buds: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Something we eat can hit one tastebud, like a piece of candy setting off the notification to our brain we have just touched our a sweet taste bud, or it can hit multiple, like lemonade tapping into the sweet tastebud through the sugar but also the sour from the lemons. Our taste buds perform pretty simple tasks but the reasoning behind the reaction can be more complex, such as bitter letting us know if something is potentially poisonous.
While we often interchange the words taste and flavor, flavor is what we actually look to work towards when creating a recipe. Flavor is more than just whipping something up that hits upon own of our five taste buds. Flavor is a creating when we compound our other senses with taste, but such as touch and sight, but especially when we add in smell. Salsa is a good example to work with. An amazing spoonful of salsa over a tortilla chip is more than just sweet tomatoes and acid lemon, the entire bite is a combination of the simple tastes of sweet, salty, and sour being activated, but we have smell assistance from maybe cilantro or peppers, and touch sensations being triggered from jalapeno heat, and a tortilla chip also adds a satisfying crunch we actually start to seek out whenever a bowl of salsa makes an appearance at the table. This is obviously a very elementary analysis of how flavor works, but to put things simply, we truly eat with our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
This lavender raspberry ginger sauce is something easily gobbled up with all the senses. It hits the taste buds with a splash of sweet and a hit of sour from the raspberries, the touch buds (if those are such a thing but I doubt it!) are fired up just a bit from the fresh ginger, and the sense of smell, well it’s almost on overload with wisps of lavender bud, fresh spicy ginger, raspberry, tangy vinegar, and rich aromatic port wine.
Cook Time: 30 Minutes
Servings: 4
Also Works With: Deer, Elk, Pronghorn, Bison
Looking for more moose recipes? Try out this Smoked Moose Burger with Pomegranate Caramelized Onions recipe by Lindsey Bartosh!
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Moose Backstrap with a Lavender Raspberry Ginger Sauce
4
servings30
minutes30
minutesKeep the screen of your device on
Ingredients
1 lb moose backstrap – cut into 1 and ½ inch to 2 inch steaks
Montreal Steak Seasoning
1 tablespoon butter
1 pint fresh raspberries
2 inch piece fresh ginger
1 tablespoon ground lavender buds
½ cup balsamic vinegar
½ cup port wine
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
- Remove moose backstrap from the fridge and allow it to sit at room temperature for fifteen to twenty minutes. This will help create an even temperature throughout the steaks and allow for more even cooking.
- In a medium size saucepan, melt a tablespoon of butter over medium low heat.
- Once the butter begins bubbling, add the entire pint of fresh raspberries. Use a wooden spoon to break the berries up as they soften.
- Grate the piece of fresh ginger with a rasp or the fine holes on a cheese grater into the crushed raspberries. A handy tip for ginger peeling is to use a spoon edge and scrape the skin off the ginger.
- Once the raspberries have softened and broken down, separating into a fine juice and the seeds, add the half cup each of balsamic vinegar and port wine.
- Bring the liquid to a gentle boil and then reduce to a simmer. Allow the sauce to simmer gently for about ten minutes, or until the sauce has reduced and thickened to the desired level.
- Stir in the tablespoon of ground lavender buds. Season to taste for salt and pepper.
- Preheat the oven broiler to high.
- Over medium high, heat a cast iron skillet or over pan able to move from stove top to oven.
- Cut the moose backstrap into thick individual steaks, between 1 and ½ inches to 1 inches, and season generously with Montreal Steak Seasoning.
- Once the skillet is preheated, add the steaks and cook for three to four minutes, depending on the desired doneness level, then flip and cook an additional three to four minutes.
- Place the entire skillet with the steaks into the preheated oven and cook for five to seven minutes, again depending on desired doneness level of steaks.
- Allow steaks to rest for several minutes before plating atop a bed of rice, mashed potatoes, or polenta. Drizzle with heaping helpings of the lavender raspberry ginger sauce. Enjoy!
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