Status Review

Want to see a status review of how far we’ve come and how far we’ve got to go on our journey to hunt, gather and cook our way through Cooking Wild in Missouri? I do.

The photos in this post are of the recipe index in the book. A check is placed by the recipes we have made.

What I found interesting:

1.       We’ve go a long way to go! It seems like I’ve been cooking up a storm out of the book. When I look at all the recipes without checks next to them, it opens my eyes to all we have to go.

2.       If you don’t have the book, you might find the index interesting. As you can see, there are a lot of recipes, and they are kind of all over the board as far as cuisine goes.

3.       We have been pretty thorough with making recipes that we have been able to hunt and gather ingredients for. The check marks are definitely in bundles—either we harvested the wild ingredient and pretty much exhausted the recipes that include it, or we haven’t been able to get the wild ingredient yet.

4.       There are a lot of wild mushroom recipes and we kind of stink at mushroom hunting. That will be interesting in the spring, summer and fall. Oh, well. Nothing to do about that right now.

5.       We started this project in August and are therefore about ½ way through the year. I’d say we’re pretty much on target being half way done with the recipes. But, I’m wondering if we are leaving some of the harder things to harvest in the wild for the last. Fred has experience deer hunting, for example, but I’m not sure about walleye, paddlefish, and all those mushrooms. On the other hand, he got the duck hunting figured out, and that was sure a challenge.

 

Birds for Hire

The pheasant recipes worried me. Early on we contacted a friend in Iowa where I had hunted successfully before, knowing this was stretching Cooking Wild in Missouri beyond its borders, but also thinking it was my best bet. No dice - he said I'd be wasting my time. He didn't have any birds on his farm this year.

Several years ago I attemped to pheasant hunt in Northwest Missouri with my Dad and one of his buddies. I remember doing what appeared to be mud-bog racing to keep from burying Dad's new truck in what I had mistakingly thought was a county road. I remember walking so much that the dogs gave up and layed down. And I remember that we never saw a pheasant. I can honestly say that I've seen more prairie chickens in the wild in Missouri than pheasants.

So I consulted my lifelong bird-hunting partner, my father. He's a farmer that has a lot of feeding to do this time of year, and wasn't too interested in going to South Dakota or Texas. I only needed two cups of pheasant meat. He suggested we go to a private pay-to-hunt place close to home where we could get pheasant and quail. I agreed and told him I would check into it, as a delay tactic, and then invited him to go as a Christmas/birthday gift to him.

This Saturday is a the day. Going to a pay-to-hunt pheasant farm is kind of like going to brothel. Sure, you look forward to the experience and will probably enjoy it while you're there, but even if you perform well you're not going to brag to your friends about it afterward. The contrtactual nature of the arrangement implies a guarantee of success that takes away from the manly pride of the hunt somewhat.

It's also probably cheaper to go to a brothel than a pay-to-hunt ranch. I price shopped several hunting farms online, and their prices don't vary a lot, and all seem quite steep. I won't say exactly how much, because Ann may read this blog. Let's just say it would be cheaper to eat pheasant at a nice restuarant, with white table-cloths, and follow it up with dessert and coffee.

Then again, these guys have raised these birds from eggs, to tiny helpless hatchlings, to young birds learning to fly, and finally to maturity. And I'm asking to come out to their farm and shoot them with a shotgun. I suppose a man deserves to be compensated for that.

My one previous experience with this taught me that success doesn't necessarily come easily, even when you pay for it. I took Dad to a pay-to-hunt quail operation a few years ago. When we found the quail that we had purchased, which had been hidden from us in Easter-egg fashion while we drank hot coccoa, they were rather hard to get out of their thorny thicket. When we did get them up, they seemed to be impervious to our birdshot. After I finally downed one, I realized why. This creature was unlike any Bobwhite quail I'd shot before. It was at least twice as big, as was able to shake off a scattering of the light shot we were throwing at it. To drop one you had to get it dead-center in your pattern, and do it pretty quickly. I needed heavier shells, but it was too late. Some of the super-quail I had just purchased escaped to the nearby woods, where I hope they are still living happy lives. My sympathy to any predator that tries to take one on.

This Saturday, we'll be hunting pheasants and quail, so I'll have an array of shotshells on hand. In addition to my two cups of pheasant, I also need quail for some recipes. Dad has hunted the farm this year and not found many, so I thought I had better leave what was there to him and my nephew Eric. So several recipes are riding on how well Dad and I shoot Saturday, even if we are paying for the birds.

Gooseberry frozen-yogurt gelato, page 174-175

Gooseberries stewing for the ice cream

Here's the sum total list o' ingredients for this dessert: gooseberries, sugar, water and yogurt. And, really, does water even count as an ingredient? Not sure.

 I stewed the gooseberries with sugar and water, then strained it through cheese cloth, stirred in yogurt and let it cool. I then waited a couple days and froze it in an ice cream maker.

 Two remarkable things here.

#1 I am using my grandma’s old ice cream maker (‘K, that’s not the remarkable part, please keep reading). Not the nostalgic, cool kind you pour salt and ice around, but her later version that you keep in your freezer. This kind of ice cream maker consists of an outer plastic case, an inner metal tub that freezes to some artic blizzard level, a paddle that sits in the tub and churns the creamy mixture, and a hand crank. You know the kind. Anyhow, I poured the gooseberry mixture in the tub, inserted the paddle, attached the crank, stirred and . . . the whole bloody tub spun right around with the paddle. Fat lot of good that does. The exterior plastic case was still-I was holding on to it. But the tub was in no way attached to the case, so it just spun around. In the mean time, the frozen yogurt is not being churned, but rather freezing hard to the sides of the tub.

Finished product, via la!

The last time I made ice cream from the book I borrowed my cousin’s ice cream maker and busted the handle off because I let the ice cream set up too much along the edges and could not crank the paddle through it.

What to do, what to do?

OK. In case there’s ever an IQ test concerning this very subject of how to keep the ice cream tub from spinning when making gooseberry frozen yogurt, I cannot personally think of a better answer than what Fred did. He lifted the tub from the plastic case, poured a little water in the case, shoved the frozen tub back in which immediately turned the water to ice and held the tub firm to the case so that I could churn the creamy mixture inside without the tub spinning. Now that’s a MacGyver trick for you, eh? I was amazed. How did he think of that?

#2 Gooseberry frozen yogurt is yummy. Really. Fred’s first bite reminded him of gooseberry pie his mom used to make he hadn’t remembered having until he tasted gooseberries again. I can imagine having a tradition of making this ice cream in the summer when the gooseberries are ripe and looking forward to the season each year. It’s almost like an Italian lemon ice only more complex in flavor, somewhat tart and sweet and creamy all at once. We all found it very refreshing and I’m sure January does not do the dish service.

 OK, to be honest, Oliver didn’t try it but he has the flu today and I’m thinking gooseberry frozen yogurt, or ice cream, or whatever you call it, is not the most appetizing sort of treat with the flu.

How's that for a fine way to end this post?

Venison chili, page 25

Fred here. I like making chili, even if I do have a hard time remembering how to spell it. I’ve made some pretty good batches of chili before just by winging it. I don’t have a particular recipe that I go by, I just use what I have on hand.

The author of Cooking Wild In Missouri takes a similar approach, owning up to the fact that when she made this recipe she based it loosely on her mother’s chili, but was largely just cleaning out her freezer and using what she had in.

Nevertheless, in keeping with the spirit of our blog, I followed this recipe precisely – well, almost. I doubled it, and as it was getting it all pulled together, the three cups of water looked like plenty, so I didn’t double it to six. I’m glad I made this adjustment, because the chili was still a little thin for my taste.

It seems venison is used in chili a lot, I think because some people who aren't wild about the taste of straight venison don't know what else to do with it, and chili is a good way to mask the flavor. But in my opinion, the other venison recipes in this book allow you to really appreciate venison at it's best.

 Overall, this was a great, easy chili recipe. Personally, when I make chili I like to include either stew meat or dice up steak. Some ground venison or hamburger is fine, but I like to have at least half of the meat to be some venison steaks or even a cut-up roast. And I'd add some masa to thicken it up a bit. I would encourage anyone to experiment with chili and make it yours.

With this big recipe, we ended up with four ziplock bags going into the freezer. It's nice to get a few meals ahead, and a couple of these may get used on top of baked potatoes, hot dogs or nachos.

Gooseberry-blueberry crunch, pages 170-171

Gooseberries and blueberries before they are baked

My parents have a gooseberry bush growing in their back yard. Gooseberry bushes have narrow thorns with green, very tart berries that eventually turn pinkish purple as they ripen. That I know of, most people prefer them tart to cook with rather that letting them ripen. Gooseberries are a scruffy bush. They grow in scruffy areas, like along railroad tracks, in old fields, overgrazed woods and old homesteads. And they have a scruffy appearance with their scrappy thorns and disorganized branches.

My parents have a very old home. The gooseberry bush is growing beside a rickety apple tree next to the old chicken house turned garden shed. Mom froze two bags of gooseberries and let me have them to continue making recipes with this winter. Besides, the berries had been in the freezer long enough and were due to be used.

The first dessert recipe I made with gooseberries was kind of like a crisp with gooseberries, blueberries and a nutty, oat topping. Seemed like a safe bet for the good dessert and I was right. It was hard not to like.

I rarely choose to have ice cream on top of a dessert as I feel it pollutes whatever dessert is underneath, but this one called for it. The gooseberries are so tart and intense that I thought the ice cream mellowed it out nicely. Next time I make this dessert, and I do hope there is a next time, I think I'll try cooking the gooseberries down a bit in a saucepan until they open up rather than baking them whole. I'm telling you, when you took a bite of the dessert with a whole gooseberry and it popped open in your mouth, shewweee, it was
T-A-R-T tart.

Fred got me a new camera for Christmas with a larger apeture than I've had before. I am enjoying taking food photos with it, which is why he picked this camera out for me. Before, the two things I knew to look for on a digital camera were # of megapixels and how much it would zoom. I didn't realize what a big difference the apeture made it getting bright photos even in lower light.

Mallard stew with tomato and eggplant, pages 62-63

It's a Cooking Wild in Missouri marathon! Four recipes in two days is what we are attempting.

Tumeric, paprika, fennel, cumin, coriander and salt

The first I made was a duck dish. The 2 mallards, one pintail duck and one teal were all given to us by Fred's new duck hunting companion Bill Ward. Duck hunting season is closed for the year now and we had run out.  First impression I had of the ducks: that Bill Ward is a neat and tidy duck butcher. Thank you! I now know that it's not easy to keep the feathers from sticking to the meat and cutting out the meat in nice, big pieces. It's an art form, really, and I guess Bill has had enough practice to get that art form down. However, even the label on the zip lock bag from Bill looked like it was written by an architect, those perfect capital letters all even and easy to read. Not only has Bill had practice, I'm guessing from his hand writting that he is naturally inclined to do tidy work.

Anyway with Bill's duck I made a stew. It's a Moroccan dish again with lots of spices, onion, tomato and lemon. The dish is served over rice with cilantro and toasted almonds tossed on top.

Fred has been craving spicy food the last couple days and this so hit the spot for him. He was really looking forward to dinner as it was cooking and bragged on it several times during the meal. The duck breasts are cooked whole in the stew, so each person got a large piece of duck to try. I was afraid it would be too "ducky" for the boys to enjoy, but Oliver ate a whole breast and Henry had one plus.

I like it when people come in to the kitchen and light up at the aromas. And, let me tell you it's tons better that seeing a kid peer over the stove with a tear in their eye or hearing, "There's a lot of garlic in this recipe again, eh?"

Watching my family enjoy a meal is quite simply one of my very favorite past times.
Thanks for sharing the duck, Bill.

black walnut chocolate biscotti, page 128

I've never made biscotti, have you? They are a romantic-type food to me. Not romantic necessarily like Valentine's Day but romantic in the life-is-rich-if-you-have-a-biscotti type way. I think it's because I see them at neat places like coffee shop counters and book stores and such.

This is another recipe I made when Sara Hill came to do a TV spot about our project. I wanted to make something from the book to take on our travels for the holidays and thought biscotti would keep and travel well.

And guess, what, it turns out that this biscotti recipe makes something that closely resembles . . . biscotti!!! It's still shocking to me to cook something I've never made and have it turn out like I picture it.

The dough is very dry with no fat. First you make loaves and bake them, then cut the loaves into slices and bake the slices again to dry them a bit more. This dough is spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and cocoa and has black walnuts, too, which are very flavorful in themselves.

I may like the idea of biscotti more than the actual taste. I am used to sweets being richer and can recall eating biscotti a few times and feeling a little flat about the results.

I haven't dug into our homemade biscotti batch yet. I am looking forward to sharing them with friends for the holidays and giving my full report.

1/1/2012 Full report: biscotti were nice as a hiking dessert and enjoyable to bring on our travels. See photos: