The Polish Wild Game Championships return to Poznań

Fallow deer leg and rabbit saddle are the basis of the competition dishes

This time, the basis of the main courses will be a leg of wild fallow deer with a bone and a saddle of rabbit with a patch and kidneys.

– Wild fallow deer meat unfairly receives little interest from chefs. Daniel, one of the smaller representatives of our deer, is often identified with breeding, where he is actually popular. However, we also obtain meat of this species from the natural environment and it is this raw material with the highest culinary values ​​that the competitors will face during the championship, says Gabriel Mularczyk, commercial director of Las-Kalisz, the main organizer of the competition.

Participants will also have to add additional products to their recipes: for the fallow deer dish, paste of reduced red wine and port wine from Chef, and for the rabbit dish, paste of reduced white wine from Chef and amber cheese from the Skarby Serowara line.

– Chefs taking part in the competition should demonstrate their knowledge of using various carcass elements in an optimal way to obtain the best texture and bring out the best of the product in terms of taste. The bar is set high. It will be necessary to use the fallow deer leg together with the shank, and in the case of rabbit, all parts: saddle, rib, kidneys with perirenal fat and bones remaining from the cutting. The jury will pay attention to the appropriate use of raw materials, taking into account the zero waste principle. What will also be important is the ability to properly select additives and compose a dish not only visually, but also tastefully - adds Adam Chrząstowski, culinary ambassador of the HoReCa Las-Kalisz brand.

The competition dishes will be served on plates provided by the Polish Porcelain Group.

Preliminaries and final

Six two-person teams composed of professional chefs will take part in the final of the memorial, which will take place in Poznań. Five of them will be selected by the jury chaired by Adam Chrząstowski based on the submitted dish proposals. Applications can be submitted until February 29. The winners of the previous edition of the competition also have a chance to defend the title of Polish champions in venison preparation: Bartosz Zajdel from the Loft restaurant in Gostyń and Jakub Żymelski from the Antonińska Hotel & Restaurant in Leszno. However, the condition for their participation in this year's championship is to send the proposed recipe for the competition dish within the set deadline. Otherwise, the place of the sixth team will be taken by the next team selected in the qualification.

A way to promote game and rabbit meat in the HoReCa industry

The aim of the competition - apart from commemorating Marian Tarnawski, the founder of the Las-Kalisz company and a lover of hunting cuisine - is to promote venison and rabbit meat in the HoReCa industry in Poland and abroad. For many years, venison has been considered difficult to prepare and expensive. This opinion was due to the poor quality of raw materials supplied to restaurants, which in turn was related to the lack of appropriate standards. Meat was rarely cut for sale in restaurants. Therefore, the most common game dish was goulash.

– Las-Kalisz tries to listen to the needs of chefs, who expect a repeatable product that does not generate large losses during cutting. The Polish Game Championships serve to show that the meat of wild animals is not only healthy, but also easy to prepare, and at the same time leaves a huge scope for chefs to show off their skills. All you need is raw material of the right quality. The same also applies to rabbit, which more and more restaurateurs are slowly becoming convinced of - comments Adam Chrząstowski.

The Polish Game Championships - Marian Tarnawski Memorial has the status of a competition nominated as a qualifying competition for the Polish Culinary Cup 2024. Competitors will fight for financial prizes, as well as the right to use the titles and signs of the Polish champion and runner-up in game preparation 2024.