02/04© Ronald L. Moody (2004)
All rights reserved.
Reprinted here with permission.

Taste of the Wild Offers a Grand Feast
and Gourmet’s Delight

Who among us hunters has not had the experience of inviting friends and family to a meal of wild game only to see them react as if you had just dropped an outraged skunk on the living room carpet.

Indeed, your invitees may consider themselves better off being served the skunk well boiled than having to risk tooth and stomach on game meat you’ve handled badly and cooked worse. “It tastes like old liver, it’s gamey, tainted, tough, dry . . .etc,” are all familiar gastronomic indictments. The idea of a venison or wildfowl entree’ becomes pejorative only after a bad experience where the flavor is ruined. On the other hand, a well-processed and superbly cooked possum may not bridge the taste culture gap either.

With hunting seasons generally concluded, meat in the freezer — and a winter’s worth of time in which to bring the hunt to its logical culinary conclusion — thoughts naturally turn to the question of “what in heck do I do with this stuff?”

The risks involved in answering this question can be more perilous than the hunt itself. The rewards should be even greater, however. Wild game well cooked is the best of all meat dishes. Indeed, the European royalty (who chased many of our ancestors across to the new world because of minor poaching indiscretions) considered their game too good for mouths of commoners. Their highnesses would beat or hang any such riff raff who tried to sneak some venison off the king’s table. Obviously, they knew how to cook the stuff.

My thoughts on this subject were sparked by a recent magazine article which told the story of an enterprising nimrod who attempted to prepare a classic game feast for a gaggle of non-hunting friends. The writer made extreme sport of haute cuisine by challenging himself to prepare dishes of wild game using only 19th Century recipes from the intimidating Le Guide Culinaire by Auguste Escoffier (the long-dead boss dog of French chefs).

Like a true Tennessee country boy I took one look at that trick and said: “I can do that.” This was followed by a redneck’s most famous last words: “hey bubba watch this.”

I had to winnow through about two thousand Escoffier recipes to find one with all ingredients available out here in central Montana. I settled on 'Partridge au vert-pre.’ I am familiar with partridge, but having never witnessed an ‘au vert-pre’ I hadn’t a clue what this dish would look like on the table. I suspected I might be Christopher Columbus looking for India.

I had been warned that Escoffier could be hazardous to beginners and I quickly fell into the quick sand. The recipe called for ‘poaching’ the partridge (which became the breasts of four sharptail grouse) then covering it with supreme sauce finished with printanier butter and garnished with steamed green vegetables. Poaching turned out not to mean the bird had to be shot out of season. “Roasting in water with a low heat,” was the glossary definition. I translated that from the French to mean: “crock-pot.”

It was when I started making the sauce and butter, however, that I actually sank into the swamp. Turns out that none of these old recipes start with: “open a can of cream of mushroom soup.” Just to make the first ingredient of the sauce – game stock (broth) - I was supposed to break bones into a pot of water, throw in a shin of veal and any tough old birds lying about and boil for hours. And this just to kick off the supreme sauce.

Eight bouillon cubes later I was ready. The remainder of the sauce journey took me through a three-hour chemistry lab of cream, butter, herbs and flour. I finished up with a tasty, tawny sauce that actually may have resembled what Escoffier intended. The maestro said it had to be white but I only cook with whole-wheat flour so tan is good.

In the end I discovered America. The Partridge au vert-pre looked great and tasted better. Whether Escoffier would have recognized it I don’t know.

I placed the dish before my own gaggle of human lab rats (including non-hunting friends) at a wild game potluck dinner in which I tacitly agreed to taste their stews, pate’s, meatballs and jerky in exchange for them risking their health on my offering. People who don’t hunt have a bad habit of telling the truth when induced to taste wild game. My crew all looked honest when they admired the taste and presentation and asked for the recipe before going back for seconds.

Such culinary bungee jumping isn’t necessary for a hunter to truly enjoy fine dining with wild game. Scores of wild game cookbooks fill the bookstores. Many good recipes are very easy. Some even start with “open a can of mushroom soup.” My years as a working bachelor have left me with a list of recipes that require no more than 15 minutes of preparation and 30 minutes to complete.

I can understand that not all hunters or their spouses want to be wild game kitchen artists. What I cannot understand is that hunters will kill game animals only to abandon the animal in the field, or, more commonly, to let it ruin in transport or the freezer. My sense of right and wrong in the matter of killing animals in the hunt demands that the meal is essential to the ethic of the kill.

In the case of pheasants it is legally impossible to kill more than I could eat in a year. Canada geese, however, force me to stop hunting before I would like to. I can consume about eight per year; when I have that many it’s time to go duck hunting.

National surveys repeatedly have shown the non-hunting 85 percent of American people will support recreational hunting with a few common sense qualifications. Two of these are that hunters treat wild animals with respect, and that hunters make good use of the game they kill.

News stories that appear every season about discovery of abandoned elk or piles of discarded ducks offend both of these ethical principles. The harm to hunting as an American heritage is immense. The lesson is simple. A hunter is well rewarded in fine dining if he or she learns to process and prepare wild game for the table. Lacking that, the hunter should not kill animals that will not be put to good use by somebody. Absolutely never should game animals be abandoned in the field.

Here are a couple of easy recipes. These require 10 to 15 minutes of work in the morning but dinner’s ready when you get home:

CROCKPOT VENISON ROAST

1. Pour two-inches of water in a slow cooker (e.g. crock pot) and turn on high.
2. Add three cloves of chopped garlic (or a tablespoon of bottled chopped garlic).
3. Add seasoned salt and minced onion to taste.
4. Brown your roast on both sides in a hot skillet of either cooking oil or bacon fat.
5. Put roast in the cooker and turn down to low setting.
6. Cook for about three hours or until a toothpick can be pushed easily through the meat but the meat is still firm. Don’t over cook else the slow cooker will eventually make the roast a shrunken ball floating in a gravy of the juices that should be in the meat.

EASY PHEASANT

1. Pour one inch of water in a slow cooker and turn on high.
2. Add a bit of garlic and a bay leave. Season with salt and-or poultry seasoning.
3. Cook for about two hours or until the meat is separating from the bone. Take meat off bones and put back in the broth.
4. Add a can of golden cream of mushroom soup.
5. Let cook a few more minutes until soup and broth make gravy. Serve over toast or mashed potatoes.
6. Serve with a wine of your choice and a toast to the hunt.

Yr. Ob’t Sv’t Ron Moody

Ron can be reached by email at couleeking@hotmail.com.