It is the middle of hunting season. If moose is your meat, you have already been on the hunt and either have some in the freezer or not. If you haven’t got your deer yet, there is still time, at least for some hunters. Our island bow hunters are still at it.

As anyone who saw the venison stroganoff recipe a couple weeks ago knows, we’ve had deer meat generously given to us. Deer or moose can stand in for beef, and here recommended by Mitch Hutchison, the wife of Philo, one of our local sporting club’s founders, is yet another variation on a beef recipe. Mitch borrows from elegant beef bourguignon recipes and substitutes venison, sometimes moose meat, for the beef, and creates a dish good enough for company dinner. If you operate on the principle that the deer meat is essentially free, then this is an economical way to treat guests to fine fare.

For my bourguignon I used a chuck roast cut up in stewing pieces. Had I stumbled on this recipe sometime in September, I would have been inclined to use up the smallest onions in my onion patch, but since I pickled them, I bought a 1-pound package of frozen pearl onions instead. With Thanksgiving coming, small white onions either are, or shortly will be, ubiquitous, and you may prefer to use those fresh ones, and peel them yourself. (You know, don’t you, that you can speed the peeling by boiling them until the skin feels a bit loose, then trimming the tops and bottoms off, and squeezing the peeled onion out?) Use fresh mushrooms if possible because they add more flavor than canned.

Bourguignon is good on rice or noodles, or even polenta (fried cornmeal mush to us Yankees). This is actually a good dish for preparing ahead and leaving in a slow-cooker on low all day, to be finished a half-hour before dinner. I cooked mine in a Dutch oven on the kitchen’s wood-burning cookstove, heating the house at the same time.

Venison Bourguignon

Serves six to eight.

4 slices of bacon (or 2 tablespoons of olive oil)

31/2-4 pounds of cubed venison

4 cloves of crushed garlic

1 carrot, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cups red wine

3 cups of beef stock or broth

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of olive oil

3 cups of sliced fresh mushrooms

1 pound of pearl onions, skinned and parboiled

Put the bacon slices in the bottom of the Dutch oven and fry till crisp. Remove. Brown the meat in the bacon fat (or use olive oil if you prefer). Add the garlic, carrots, onion, wine, stock or broth and the bay leaves. Cover and let simmer for about six hours. If you are going to use a slow cooker next day, cook the mixture for half an hour and put aside in the fridge. In the morning, put it in the slow cooker and set it on low for the day.

An hour before dinner, put two tablespoons of olive oil in a large saute pan and cook pearl onions and mushrooms until all the mushrooms are soft. They will shrink. Add the mushrooms and onions to the meat. Cook uncovered until dinnertime, about 45 minutes or so, to allow the sauce to thicken. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper. Remove the bay leaves and serve.