Name: Venison curry
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Ingredients: rice, paratha or naan bread, to serve; 300 ml coconut water or water; 500 g venison fillet (be it red, fallow, sika, roe or muntjac), cut into medium cubes; 6 black peppercorns; ¼ star anise; ½ teaspoon cumin seeds; 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 cinnamon stick (about 4cm long); 2½ teaspoons hot chile powder; 1 teaspoon fennel seeds; 40 g ghee or butter; 4 cloves; 2 small red onions, finely chopped; a large handful of shaved dried coconut or 3 tablespoons unsweetened desiccated coconut; 3 tablespoons tomato purée; 1 teaspoon flaked sea salt; 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped; 1 large thumb-sized piece of root ginger, peeled and finely chopped; juice of ½ lime; shredded flat-leaf parsley leaves, to garnish; 1 teaspoon garam masala

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Good Table

By Valentine Warner

Published 2013

About

On a trip to Sri Lanka, I stopped for lunch at a lean-to with a couple of grubby plastic chairs and tables set before it. Behind a small gas stove were a scrawny man and his wife. I asked what I could have and the vendor immediately did a bizarre impression of some creature, which I took time to realise was a deer. I gave him a nod and a thumbs up. A little dish arrived with small pieces of the tenderest meat bathed in a sharp, rich red gravy covered with toasted shavings of coconut. It was