Roe Deer Salmì with Polenta: the Autumn Dish of the Belluno Dolomites

You do not decide on a salmì in the morning. You decide the day before, when the meat goes into the wine with juniper and cloves — and then, for twenty-four hours, every time you open the fridge you get that smell of woodland and spice that already tastes of Sunday.

Then comes the cooking, which is long and cannot be hurried: three hours over a low flame in which the meat stops being tough and the sauce reduces to something almost black. And then the polenta, which in the Belluno valleys is not a side dish but half the plate.

What a salmì is

The word comes from the French salmis and describes a way of cooking game: a long marinade in wine and aromatics, then browning and slow stewing in the same liquid until the sauce is thick and concentrated. It is not a sauce you add — it is the cooking liquid, reduced.

The marinade is practical before it is aromatic. Roe venison is lean, firm and strongly flavoured; the wine tenderises it, the juniper and spices round off the gamey edge that not everyone enjoys. Which is why, in mountain households, marinating was never a chef’s affectation but a necessity.

Ingredients

Method

1. The night before. Trim the meat of silverskin, put it in a large bowl with the sliced onion, garlic, lightly crushed juniper, cloves and herbs. Cover with the red wine, seal and refrigerate for at least twelve hours, better twenty-four.
2. The soffritto. Finely chop celery, carrot and onion and sweat them gently in a casserole with oil and butter. Give it a good ten minutes: they should soften, not colour.
3. Browning. Drain the meat from the marinade (keep it, strained) and dry it thoroughly with kitchen paper — wet meat boils instead of browning. Raise the heat and colour it on all sides, then season.
4. Stewing. Pour in the strained marinade, bring to the boil for a minute, then drop to the lowest heat and cover. From here it needs two and a half to three hours. Check now and then: if it dries out, add a ladle of hot stock or water.
5. Finishing. When the meat falls apart under a fork, uncover and raise the heat slightly to reduce the sauce. It should coat the back of a spoon.

The polenta, and why mais sponcio

Polenta is compulsory with salmì, and in the Belluno area there is one more reason to make it properly. The Valbelluna has its own heirloom maize, mais sponcio: the dialect name means “pointed”, after the sharp tip of the kernel turned towards the top of the cob. It is a vivid orange-grained variety, historically grown around Cesiomaggiore, Santa Giustina, Feltre and Fonzaso, documented in agricultural texts from 1882 and now listed in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste.

It gives a medium-ground flour, deep yellow-orange and flecked with brown, which makes the classic yellow mountain polenta: firm, full-flavoured, cooked for at least forty minutes and — by tradition — cut with a thread rather than a knife.

If you cannot get sponcio, any good medium-ground cornmeal will do. What matters is the time: instant polenta cannot carry a salmì.

Bringing it to the table

Polenta on the plate — a thick slice, or a ladleful if you like it soft — and the salmì on top with all its sauce, poured without shyness. The polenta soaks it up: that is why the sauce has to be both generous and reduced.

A robust mountain red, nothing oaky, and nothing else. If there is any left, it is better the next day: salmì is one of those dishes that rest well.

A dish that follows the calendar

Salmì is an autumn dish, not by taste but by calendar: it is the season when game reaches the kitchen, the same season when the herds come down from the high pastures and the villages celebrate the end of the grazing year, as at Se Desmonteghea in Falcade. In the Belluno Dolomites the kitchen has never stopped following that rhythm.

It belongs to the same world as pastìn and polenta and schìz: meat, polenta, a few things done well and no hurry at all.

Cover image: a plate of roe deer with polenta from Ristorante La Taverna, Belluno.