Poivrade Sauce For Venison

Sauce poivrade pour venaison (sharp vinegar-and-wine game sauce for venison) teaches the discipline of reduction. The one true thing is simple: reduction concentrates only what you have already built. Brown the bones and Mirepoix (No. 228) deeply and the sauce becomes profound; leave them pale and hours of simmering merely concentrate paleness.

The source assumed a saucier, a dedicated sauce cook, game stock never off the fire, several heavy saucepans, and hands available to skim and pass the sauce repeatedly through muslin. A salamander stood elsewhere on such a line, but it has no work here, so no home broiler substitute is needed. Your equivalents are one large lidded stockpot, a tall reducing pan, a fine sieve, and two deliberate muslin passes. The repeated transfers between ever-smaller brigade pans are scaffolding and can go. The browning, three-quarter acid reduction, covered oven extraction, pressing, dépouiller, and final concentration are the dish itself, and every one stays.

This two-quart batch doubles the source formula, whose astonishing potful finished at only one concentrated quart; its ratios and sequence have not moved. Make it ahead and the work becomes perfectly civil for one cook, one stove, one evening. Before you touch the pan, commit to the browning. It is the only step no later refinement can replace.