Civet de Marcassin – the recipe

During our yearly early December outing to the Gaume region, I usually buy some wild boar meat to make a ‘civet de marcassin’. This year was no different, and I bought a kilogram of extremely nice lean meat at a little butcher’s shop in Habay-la-Neuve. It cost just over 10 euro, which is very good value, considering that 1 kilogram will serve four.

These are the ingredients you need:

1 kg of lean wild boar meat cut into 5 to 7 cm diameter chunks
150 grams of ‘lardons’, strips of lean salted bacon
150 grams of mushrooms
2 medium-sized onions
2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
½ litre of game stock (you can also use red wine or a dark abbey beer), but I prefer the game stock
1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon of red currant jelly or any other sweet-sour jelly
2 small tablespoons of flower
3 to 4 tablespoons of butter
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
3 bay leaves

This is what you do:

Put a generous portion of butter in a frying pan; let it meld until it is sizzling golden brown. Sear the chunks of boar meat in the hot butter. It’s best to do this in small batches. Add a little more butter before putting in the following batch. Before putting in the meat, make sure that it is nice and dry. Best is to wipe it with a paper kitchen towel before throwing it in the hot butter. That way, you avoid that the meat starts boiling in its own juices.

Set the pan with the meat aside and start preparing the other ingredients. Roughly slice the onions, clean the mushrooms and cut them into slices.

Next, put a tablespoon of butter in a 'Le Creuset' type pot and add the sliced onion. Stir well until the onion becomes transparent. Add the strips of bacon and let them fry gently with the onions. Add a generous tablespoon of Dijon mustard and stir in well. I admit that at this point the mixture doesn’t look very attractive… but persevere… the result will be worth your while!

Add the chunks of fried meat to the pot and stir well. At this point add pepper and salt to taste. Next gently shake two small tablespoons of flower over the meat and the other ingredients. In French this is called ‘singer’. Use a wooden spatula to stir the flower into the pot’s content.

Add enough game stock (or wine or beer) to cover 80% of the pot’s content. Stir again. Put in the bay leaves, the thyme, the sugar and the red currant jelly. Stir one last time, for now … Put the lid on the pot, turn down the heat to a slow simmer, and let gently bubble away for at least 2.5 hours. Check every 30 minutes or so to control the heat and to stir all the ingredients so that they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. After 2.5 hours, add the raw sliced mushrooms and rectify the taste by adding some more sugar, pepper or salt, if necessary. Let simmer for another 30 minutes. Turn off the heat, but let the pot sit on the stove to cool down.

'Civet de marcassin’ can be eaten straight away with mashed potatoes or ‘croquettes’, half a oven cooked apple filled with cranberry sauce, or a pear stewed in red wine or braised endives. But like most stews … it’s even better the next day. Just heat it up gently for half an hour and serve the same way!

I bet you’ll like it. Bon appétit!

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