Cook Off (part deux)

The other day I  was having a typical conversation with Mrs Ipsa on the phone.  Its a talk we have frequently.  The theme of that talk was, "What are we fixing for supper that the kids will eat". Shortly after that I stumbled across a mouth watering post over at Mauser's and Muffins.  Since September I've been working the night shift at work, six days a week.  So Daddy gets leftovers for dinner.  On Saturday though, I have my one night a week to enjoy food that wasn't warmed in a microwave.  Thanks to Brigid, kids be darned, tonight I cooked.

The challenge was how to turn this:

Into something delicious.

The meat is antelope tenderloin that I shot last October.  Now I know that pronghorn isn't every bodies favorite.  In my opinion that because they don't know squat about harvesting and caring for meat.  The sins of hunters and meat handling is a post of its own.  My antelope is never gamey or sage brushy, it does have a slightly stronger flavor than a grain fed whitetail but not much.

The post below this has Brigids recipe.  I'm sure its a great recipe, but as I mentioned above Saturday is my day off, and instead of getting up checking the ingredients on hand and going to town to buy what I needed; I assumed everything was in the house.  Not so.  Let the substitutions begin. 

First thing I discovered was no mushrooms, well at least no porcini's.  So I substituted with something I had on hand (lower right in the top picture), extra credit if you guess what they are.   Then I substituted Tamari,  OK I knew I was going to use Tamari as soon as I saw her recipe, I like it better.  The real kicker, and the one I was most disappointed with was that I used the last of my panko and hadn't bought more.  I love panko and you should NEVER substitute regular bread crumbs for panko, but I did. Even though my crust came out fine, it would have been much crisper and looked more appealing with panko.  Other than some quantity adjustments, like not using 2 qts of chicken stock, I used one qt of homemade stock, and I added a tad of cayenne pepper to the rub, the recipe was basically the same.

The meat came out looking like this:

My final plate looked like this:

Not my neatest or most artistic but I was already running 1 1/2 hrs past the kids normal dinner time and a small riot would have broken out had I wasted more time taking pictures of food.  A final note on the sauce,  I think the 2qts stock had to be a misprint.  I reduced 1 qt stock and 1/2 pint cream to 2/3 cups of sauce and it was perfect.  I think the 2qts stock would have produced a very thin sauce.  Also if you follow my lead and use tamari, please remember it is more salty than other soy based sauces, reduce your salt according to taste.

Brigid, thanks for a great dinner.
If you get around to it, how about a post on how to take good pictures of food.  Yours always look great, and mine are disapointing.