I thought this past weekend would be unfortunate. For several reasons. First, because I had to make something I had never made before. Second, because I was going to watch something I was really looking forward to but was not sure whether it would be any good. Surprisingly, the past two days turned out to be a really nice weekend...
I will start from the beginning.
A couple of weeks ago Slawek's boss went hunting... As a result, Slawek was given a deer... a half of it, I mean... one front leg, one back leg and a comber. I know how it may sound but I just have to write it down... (and please don't think I'm a psycho)... there was a dead deer in my freezer... (yeah... I know... it sounds a bit freaky...)
Anyway... Last week we decided that it was time to finally eat it... I started defrosting the two legs on Wednesday morning. On Thursday morning, I had to pull the deer's skin off. Although it was pretty easy to remove, as you can imagine the whole procedure was pretty disgusting. Thankfully my friend Juan offered his help and did almost all the dirty job for me.
At first, I wanted to marinate the meat in one big piece and roast it in the oven. But then I found several recepies for deer steaks, chops and stews and decided it would be a better idea to cut it into small pieces.
To tenderise the flavour, I marinated the meat for 48 hours using a reciepe I had found on a famous Polish chef's website. On Saturday, I fried the pieces of meat, put them in a big pot, added fried onion and Polish bacon, veggies and remaining marinate and cooked it for about an hour and 20 minutes. I added a bit of red wine, plum jam, tomato puree and the stew was ready to eat.
Chiara and Mauro came over on Saturday evening. We sat at the table along with Esther and Juan. As a starter, I served baked stuffed tomatoes with salsa. Then, it was time for the big thing... I served the deer stew with roasted potatoes and pickled cucumbers. I was so affraid that the meat would not be tender enough and that it would not have a great taste. I could not have been more wrong. The stew was very tasty, the meat was tender and the flavours were well balanced. I should have jotted down all the nice comments that were made at the table. I think everybody really enjoyed the meal and I must say that I am very proud of myself :)
Sunday was a bit boring. It rained cats and dogs almost all day. I defrosted a freezer and a fridge, cooked chicken soup and made some chicken and veggetable jellies.
In the evening, Chiara, Mauro, Slawek and I went to the O2 Arena to watch Michael Jackson's This Is It at the Vue Cinema. I really wanted to see this movie but I was a bit anxious at the same time and was not sure about this whole idea of making a documentary about "what would have been". The moment I sat down, however, and the film started rolling I knew I would enjoy every second of it. And I did... I really did.
This Is It was made of over 100 hours of footage of Michael Jackson's rehearsals before what was supposed to be one of the greatest come backs in the history of music. The documentary showed his enormous talent and professionalism. He knew exactly what he wanted to make out of it. He knew every single detail, every song, every word, every rhythm and every sound. He was in good spirits, smiling, laughing and joking with people. He moved and danced like 20 years ago. All of the backup dancers, although highly trained and 20-30 years younger than Michael, did not dance half as good as him.
Not even once Michael Jackson's death was mentioned in the movie and I was particularly happy about it. The documentary was a celebration of his genius. It mirrored him as an artist. I am really grateful I was able to watch it and I think Michael's come back tour would have been trully amazing...
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