Photos: Charlie Bennet and Rasmus Brandin

Venison with savoy cabbage

Name: Venison with savoy cabbage
Prep time: 60 s
Cook time: 10 s
Total time: 70 s
Yield: 1
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Shallot; Chives; Salt; Allspice; Butter; Venison loin; Celery roots; Butter; Thyme; Red oxalis salt; Venison trim; Chicken stock; Apple juice; Thyme leaves; Garlic clove; Juice; Savoy cabbage; Mushroom; Onion

19 Nov 2024

Fredrik Berselius

Chef

Difficulty

Challenging

Total Time

1H 10MIN

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

Shallot: 1 small, finely diced

Chives: for threading

Salt: to taste

Allspice: to taste

Butter

Venison loin: 6.6 lbs/3kg

Celery roots: 2, large

Butter: 3.5 oz/100g

Thyme: 1 bunch

Red oxalis salt

Venison trim: from the loin

Chicken stock: 2.1 quarts/2l

Apple juice: 8.8 oz/250g, fresh, reduced by ¾

Thyme leaves: 50

Garlic clove: 1, crushed

Juice: from half a lemon

Savoy cabbage: 1, medium

Mushroom: 6, large medium sized

Onion: 1, small, diced finely

Learn to make the venison with savoy cabbage dish from New York’s Aska, cooked by chef Fredrik Berselius.

At Aska we use venison which is a crossbreed between the red deer and elk and comes from the Hudson Valley, NY, where they graze on a varied diet of wild herbs, grasses, and berries, contributing to the meat’s rich and distinct taste. It is robust, earthy, and slightly gamey.

How to make Aska’s venison with savoy cabbage

01.

Preparing the venison

Place the venison loin on a cutting board, with the ‘silver skin’ sinew side down. Make an incision where you see a small loin attached. Follow the contour of the meat and slice along the connective tissue. The small loin should come off in one piece.
Polish off any remaining silver skin or imperfections.
Turn the loin over, skin facing up. Insert the tip of your knife under the silver skin where it connects to palm-sized muscle at the wider end of the meat. Slide your knife underneath, and away to loosen the piece.
Grab the piece with your hand and gently lift it up.
Run your knife at a slight angle, blade facing the skin, and pull the piece while guiding your knife in the opposite direction against the skin to remove it.

02.

Tying the loin

Divide the loin into sections to fit in a large pan.
Take the twine and tie around the end of the meat, leaving the knot and 40cm of string running parallel to the loin.
Make a figure eight with the twine and wrap it over the loin so it ties parallel to the first knot. Repeat the process every 3cm.
Alternatively, tie around the loin every 3cm. Secure the twine with a knot. Remove excess twine with scissors and complete the rest of the meat.

03.

Cooking the meat

Season the meat with salt.
In a hot, but not smoking pan, add a film of oil.
Roast all sides of the meat. Roll it back and forth to color it evenly.
Add a knob of butter and baste the meat with a spoon. The butter should be frothy and golden.
Remove the meat to let it rest.
Check the inner temperature with a thermometer.
Either let the meat rest or put it in a 300ºF/150ºC oven. The inner temperature should be 5–10 below the desired final temperature.
Rest for 5–10 min.
Reheat the meat in a 350ºF/175ºC oven to an internal temperature of 105ºF/40ºC.

04.

Making the sauce

Dice and divide all the trimmings into 2cm cubes or pieces.
In a large pan suitable to fit the trim without overcrowding it, over high heat, add a film of oil. Roast the trim, stirring every two to three minutes until it’s taken on a deep golden-brown.
Add the chicken stock and gently cook, just below simmer, for 45 minutes.
Strain liquid into a new pot and reduce slowly, just below simmer to 1/3.
Add apple juice, lemon juice, thyme, garlic, and a small knob of butter.

05.

Making the mushroom filling

In a hot pan with a film of oil, fry the mushrooms until slightly brown and aromatic. Set aside and let cool to room temperature.
Once at temperature, finely dice the mushrooms.
In a medium hot pan, with a small amount of butter, fry onions and shallots until lightly caramelized.
Add the diced mushroom, season with salt and allspice and let cool to where you can handle them with your hands.
Reserve as filling for the cabbage leaves.

06.

Preparing the cabbage with mushroom filling

Remove leaves from cabbage and wash in cold water. Pat dry.
On a cutting board, punch out 8 round, 80mm diameter discs.
Blanch the discs in 2% salt water for about 1 minute until tender and vibrant in color.
Blanch 4 chives, in and out of the water.
Spoon a mound of mushroom filling into the center.
Fold the cabbage in half and carefully sew it from one end to the other, with each stitch 8mm apart, using a needle and the blanched chives.

07.

Serving

Reheat cabbage servings together with venison.
On a plate, arrange one piece of the cabbage alongside the venison.
Finish with oxalis leaves, sea salt, and the sauce.

Recipe and images taken from The Heart Surgeon's Cookbook published by Getinge AB. Production by Forsman & Bodenfors, print by Wind, Sweden.

Fredrik Berselius

19 Nov 2024

New York

Modern Fine Dining

The Chef

Fredrik Berselius was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, but followed in the footsteps of his sister Michaela by moving to London. It was she who introduced him to the world of fine dining and it was in London that in the early 2000s, after failing to be accepted to study art at Central Saint Martins, he “fell into cooking”.

Hungry for something new, he moved to New York City. After studying nutrition at the Natural Gourmet Institute, he worked in a series of NYC restaurants, culminating in the renowned Per Se.

In 2012, Berselius opened a pop-up restaurant in Brooklyn called Frej which was followed in the same location by the original Aska. In its first year, Aska earned a Michelin star, which then became two stars, after Aska reopened in larger premises in 2016.

When he’s not in the kitchen evolving his celebrated take on New Nordic cuisine, Berselius likes to be out and about, surrounded by nature. He has competed at a high level in various sports, from snowboarding to cycling, and enjoys combing the countryside for interesting ingredients while pedaling in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

Restaurants

In 2012, before launching the restaurant that would go on to make his name in the world of fine dining, Berselius and partner Richard Kuo opened Frej, a pop-up restaurant serving affordable Scandinavian cuisine Located in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, Frej turned out to be a short-lived venture, but from its ashes rose the first incarnation of Aska, appropriately meaning ‘ashes’ in Swedish. Here, the carefully curated tasting menu combines Scandinavian influences with thoughtfully sourced ingredients from local producers in the northeast US.

Within a year, Aska had earned its first Michelin star, a recognition of its innovative bridging of the gap between the culinary heritage of the chef’s birthplace and the resources available near his Brooklyn home. Encouraged by the restaurant’s success, Berselius decided to move it to a more expansive location by the Williamsburg Bridge, where the restaurant reopened in 2016.

After just a few months, Aska gained a second Michelin star, becoming one of only a handful of restaurants in New York to achieve this honor. A three-star review in The New York Times soon followed, and it was also named one of the 10 Best New Restaurants in America by Bon Appetit magazine.

Recipes and dishes

Berselius describes Aska as having a “New-York driven menu” which, however, features flavors largely taken from the Swedish tradition of his childhood. While it may seem paradoxical, the chef sees similarities between these two parts of the world in terms of the landscape, the produce and more.

He is a believer in local, often foraged ingredients, and a perfectionist when developing his menus—a single recipe with only three ingredients apparently took him two years to develop—but the results speak for themselves. The richness and complexity of flavor he conjures from seemingly simple ingredients is breathtaking, his signature bladderwrack or sea oak served with an emulsion of blue mussels being a case in point.

The techniques he and his team use to achieve this culinary magic include fermenting, pickling, curing and smoking—all staples of Nordic cuisine, all employed to add Berselius’ twist to his ingredients.

In 2018, Berselius published his first cookbook, Aska, with Phaidon, in which he shares not only 85 recipes but also some of the secrets of his approach and celebrates the heritage of both his Swedish upbringing and his adopted US home.

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