Get to Crackin'

Hey, everybody. Guess what. I've been given a a bag of hickory nuts. Can you believe that! What  a great email it was to recieve a message that a coworker of mine and his wife had been to the pecan festival in Brunswick and ran across a fellow selling hickory nuts. My coworker's  wife apparently is following the blog and knew we were having a hard time finding hickory nuts  so she bought a bag of them for me. How cool is that? Muchos thank yous, Diane. And, these are not just any hickory nuts. They are from the coveted shellbark hickory, the ones I told you about in an earlier post that make larger nuts than other kinds of hickories in Missouri. I feel like what Julie in the Julie/Julia Project must have felt like when her fans started sending her money to help  her pay for the expensive ingredients found in  Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I spent about a half hour cracking the nuts. And, I'm up to about 2 tablespoons of nut meats. Clearly, I'm going to need to take a lesson of work efficiency, here. They are such a prize possesion to me now that I can't bear to waste any speck of nut meat. How am I ever going to be able to happily to dump handfuls of them into a recipe? It's a bit unfair for any recipe to have to be worth all that. Except that cracking nuts is a perversely satisfying task, like what knitting must seem like (not that I'd know, haven't ever really tried knitting much). The monotony and detail work is  . . . almost meditative. So, I'll be meditating away on this lovely Friday night cracking and picking away at my hickory nuts.  

Open Season

Legal disclaimer: The following blog post is for entertainment purposes only. If I mistakenly provide you with inaccurate information that gets you ticketed or arrested, saying, “But I read it on Woods To Food,” will serve as a very weak legal defense before any of Missouri’s fine county judiciaries. I’ve been trying to fit in some archery practice, when I was struck with a shocking news flash: firearms season is here! The bow would have to wait.
I’m talking turkey. This is old news to any real turkey hunter, but I was still assuming the dates were about the same as they were back in the day – a couple of weeks long, starting in mid-October. But I checked the dates, and found that turkey season is actually the entire month of October, 1 – 31.
Now starkly aware of how grossly uninformed I am, I started looking over my other information on the deer and turkey season that my wife had brought home for me. Egads! There was a firearms deer season that opens this weekend, right at my backdoor. It’s an anterlerless only urban deer season, occurring in a few select urban areas of Missouri, southern Boone County being one of them.
But wait! Overlapping turkey and deer firearm seasons? Did this mean I could arm myself with two guns and hunt both simultaneously? Several years ago, when I first got into hand-gunning, I considered wearing a large caliber handgun in addition to carrying my rifle, and I would use the handgun for close deer, and the rifle for one that is far away. But when I consulted the manual, I found that carrying two firearms for hunting was prohibited.
But apparently now this rule has been relaxed, and there is no longer a prohibition on carrying two firearms. Should I also carrying my bow, in case I saw a buck? No, carrying a firearm while bow hunting is still prohibited, even when the seasons overlap as they do this weekend. I’d need to stick to my guns, and give the bucks a break.
If I rode my motorcycle to the go hunting with two guns, I would look somewhat like Randall “Tex” Cobb in his role as the bounty hunter in Raising Arizona, albeit I’m five inches shorter and about 70 pounds lighter. I should probably go with the truck. Plus it would be really hard to haul a deer on the Harley, although I’m sure it’s been done.
To prepare for the turkey side of things, I visited the shooting range to pattern my shotgun. It was warm, I was wearing a t-shirt, and sitting down, drawing a fine bead when I shot. Either I’ve gotten soft, or I’ve just forgotten what the recoil is like from a my little pump 12 gauge when you shot long brass, 3 inch magnum shells through it. In a word: punishing. Bring on the cooler weather, and let me put another layer or two of fabric between this butt stock and my shoulder.
While at the range, we met a very nice hand gunner, who let Ann and I each fire a clip full of 9 mm through his Czech pistol. He also offered to let us fire his other guns, which included a really nice stainless steel Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 magnum. But we needed to stick to business, and it was almost dinner time. We did, however, give Henry and Oliver an chance to fire several rounds through Henry’s .22 lever action Henry Golden Boy rifle.
Several rounds and an achy shoulder later, I felt I had achieved adequate data to take the field with my shotgun after a turkey. My deer rifle is ready to go, although a little more practice would never hurt. Bring on the weekend.

Trout and Sprout Salad, page 108

For lunch today I used leftover trout to try the trout and sprout salad and am happy to say that I can offer the recipe on this one because MDC has it published, along with about three other recipes from the Cooking Wild in Missouri book, on their web site. Actually this is one of the loosest recipes in the book in that it doesn't call for exact amouts of this and that. For a salad, that's fine by me. It's nice to have some exact recipes and some that you can be flexible with. Anyhow, used the leftovers for my own personal trout salad at work today. I made it in a bento box. Heard of those? It's a Japanese lunchbox. The premise is that you deserve a nice break in the middle of your work day so why not give yourself a healthy lunch in a nice lunch box? It's a great feeling knowing you are caring for yourself and your body. And, that's the feeling I had with the trout salad today. It was a real treat and felt like a superb lunch. It was 1. quick to make 2. portable 3. pretty 4. healthy 5. unusual 6. used leftovers 8. satiating and  7. inexpensive. Really, what more could you possibly ask for in a lunch? Fantastic. I used the left over sauce from the Korean venison dish for the dressing 'cause I still had some leftover.

Oh, and on another note Inside Columbia magazine called for a story on our blog. The article should come out in November's issue.
Oh, blast it. I took photos of the  trout salad in a bento box but the bleeping camera didn't have a memory card in it and we don't have a cord for that camera. No photo to post for now. My IT man/husband will work on it tomorrow. 

Adendum from husband: There was no way to get the photos off the camera without a cord. I had to order the cord - from China. It finally came, so here are the trout salad photos.

From Cooking Wild in Missouri:
Trout and Sprout Salad

Ingredients

• Leftover grilled or baked trout, broken into bite-sized pieces
• Fresh spinach
• Mixed lettuces
• Bean sprouts
• Cilantro
• Green onion
• Garlic tops (the green tops of fresh garlic) or freshly minced garlic
• Soy sauce
• Sesame oil
• Rice wine vinegar

Instructions:

I tossed the trout together with all the vegetables, a little soy, toasted sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. It was perfect! You also could add such things as peanuts, mung-bean threads and avocado. Fresh orange sections, carrots, red peppers or cucumbers come to mind, as well.

Comments

I've had several people tell me they tried to post comments on the blog, but it didn't work. I think I've determined that the blog was set that you had to enter a captcha in order to post, but a lot of people's browsers security was set in such a way that prevented the captcha from popping up. I changed the setting this morning, so now anyone should be able to post, with or without an account. I tested this and it seems to work.

Trout with toasted-almond orange sauce, page 96

Fred here. Ann's doing yoga, so I'll take a stab at reviewing tonight's recipe, flaunting my credentials as an experienced eater.
It was good. Real good. Check back later this week for more recipe reviews.

OK, for the longer version, maybe I should start with a legal disclaimer and a confession. First of all, no wild trout were harmed in the making of this recipe.

But before you delete our blog from your favorites, hear me out. The trout we used were Missouri trout (born and raised, or hatched and raised, rather). And they were local, purchased from the dear trout sales lady at the Columbia farmer's market. These were no factory fish.

Ann made this recipe to the T, complete with the serving suggestions of garlic mashed potatoes (from our aforementioned potato patch of course) and lightly cooked fresh spinach. I have to hand it to her, she's not only a great cook, she's very fast. She didn't start on this until after 5 p.m., were were eating just after 6 p.m., and during that hour she also picked Oliver up from piano lessons (only a few doors down the street, but still amazing).

The trout were cooked in the oven, pretty much the same way we always cook trout. The buttery orange sauce was fantastic, and was different than any I've had before. The pomengranate seeds, toasted almonds and chopped parsley complimented the fish perfectly. We opted not to garnish with prosciutto, primarily because we're cheap and prosciutto is not, but also because the trout is so mouthwatering that upstaging it with prosciutto seemed a waste. Save it for a chicken breast.

So I'd give this one yet another gold star. There are plenty more trout recipes, so maybe later I'll be able to share so harrowing tales of attempting to catch rather than purchase the main ingredient.

Venison Moussaka, page 28-29

Well, believe it or not I got my way! Turns out my sister Tracey had to work this afternoon leaving the cooking to me. Raid the fridge, kids! And, grab the venison from the freezer while you're at it.

We came back from the zoo at 4:00 and decided to make venison moussaka. Fred starting cooking while my brother-in-law and I ran to the store for further ingredients. There's a meat sauce to make, a white sauce, eggplant to broil, veggies to saute, layer them together with cheese and bread crumbs and into the oven it goes. Man, it's almost 8 p.m. now and we're all looking forward to this dinner.

O.K. I'm back from the feast. Wow. That was satisfying. What a great recipe. Tracey describes the dish as gentle, a greek version of comfort food, deeply nourishing . . . and a bit time consuming. This is a company dish. Also, Tracey prefers venson that is cooked by dry methods rather than cooked wet, so she was pleasantly surprised. 
Really, I wouldn't look any further for a moussaka recipe. Venison or not, this is the one. And, Fred thought it would make a great dish to serve someone who hadn't had venison before.
What a great day it's been. A trip to the zoo on a warm fall day, kids playing with their cousins, some good finds at a garage  sale (I got to spill it, I got an antique umbrella and a sculpture of an ibis)  and time with my sister. And to finish up the day, making a successful dinner from our Woods to Food project.  'Dats what I call a good Saturday. 

Catfish asparagus bisque, page 95

Here's a nice comfort food for any day of the week. This bisque is made with a broth of potatoes (from our potato patch), chicken broth, onion, garlic and asparagus, with lemon and catfish added after the rest is pureed. Fred thought the soup comforting, like something you'd want if your tummy was a bit off or if you had a cold.
I made a booboo cooking the soup that seemed stupid afterwards. Somehow I was looking at the cooking times of "add potatoes, cook 12 minutes, then add asparagus, cook 12 minutes more" (paraphrasing here) and thought I could cut that out and go straight to pureeing, then add the catfish and finish up the cooking time. Well, I tasted the soup once the catfish was done and . . . it tasted and had the texture of pureed raw potato. Oops. No harm done, though. I don't think the catfish was harmed by cooking longer.
The next day for lunch I topped the reheated soup with a lot of chunks of cold tomatoes from our garden. I liked it. It's the kind of lunch you enjoy and makes you feel strong and full of veggies after.
We're at my sister's house this weekend and I'm itching to cook from the Cooking Wild book. What to do. What to do. I know she's got venison in the freezer and I'm out. Hmmm. We looked through the book this morning but the recipes we have remaining to make don't blend with what she had in mind for dinner. Moreover, I really like my sister's cooking and who wants to cook when their sister will cook for them!