The nicest thing happened to me one day as I rifled through the mail. I got a letter from Dr. C. Eugene Allen, a professor and food scientist at the University of Minnesota who just happened to be a fan of this column. He was responding to a teriyaki marinade recipe for venison I’d offered to a reader who asked about how to prepare that particular cut of meat that can be tough but delicious. Bottom line, Allen said, is that ground ginger will add flavor to the meat, but it’s not going to do much to tenderize that venison. Fresh ginger, on the other hand, not only adds flavor but is also a very effective meat tenderizer. Ginger breaks down the collagen connective tissue. “This is because it contains a proteolytic enzyme named ‘zingibain,’ which was discovered in my laboratory in the early 1970s,” Allen wrote. He went on …