Carlos's Sparrow Sauce

Just like my paternal grandmother's, which she used on Polenta. "Makes a nice-a sauce", she would say as she caught the sparrows in the pigeon loft by swatting them with a
broom or popping them into a brown paper bag and whacking it on a beam. I have never felt more Italian.......

Here she is in the back of a car driven by my dad, in '38:

Summer Woodcock

Georgia friend Gil Stacy has more sense than we did when I hunted Woodcock: he keeps some for the summer mushroom harvests... chanterelles in this case.
Also notice the color of the cut flesh. Like all good Woodcock (and snipe) cooks, he
sort of passes them through a very hot oven. I get tired of hearing how dark- fleshed birds "taste like liver"- good LIVER doesn't taste like liver when it is cooked rare, turned over quickly in hot bacon fat and butter. My disgusted French- born gourmand friend Guy de la Valdene, after he read an American recipe for woodcock that involved two cans of cream of mushroom soup and an hour and a half in the oven, wrote (in Making Game in 1990): "As this recipe negates the whole reason for killing the birds in the first place, why not take it a step further and poach the Woodcock overnight in equal parts of catsup, pabulum, and Pepto- Bismol."

  

 I need to hunt Woodcock again before I die.  First pic below by Betsy Huntington from 1976, with her Parker 16, in Easton MA in the coverts I grew up in, no longer open to hunting but mercifully preserved from development as a park; second Bar Mills ME, 1987, the year after her death, in a place I still hope to hunt again, with Bart and Darne.

Incidentally, the greatest (and most undeserved ) compliment as a cook I ever had was by Russ Chatham at his old place in Deep Crick, when he and Libby and Guy and I had whipped up something impromptu and good.All I remember now was that it had sweetbreads- Guy I think-- and Risott', from me. Russ suddenly burst out with "This is so good I wish I had FOUR cook stations so we could all cook at once, all the time!" Russ is an emotional half- Italian like me, and  think it was the magical wine from his legendary cellar talking, the best I have ever had, usually with labels falling off. Surely Jim Harrison would have been a better fourth cook. But I will take my compliments when I get 'em....

Party!

After a slightly exhausting week, the much - postponed party finally straggled in to Reid and Connie's country manse in Parker CO  on Saturday. Not every one could make it (Smokey Paul and Lynne met us at a Santa Fe highway exit to hand over a pistol for Carlos --  we still live in a free country where a poet can hand a handgun to a writer to pass to an ornithologist, and pass it through three states, all legally!)

I am not sure what the "Theme" of the party might have been-- probably NOT blogging, though it had brought some of us together. But only Reid, Arthur, and me met primarily that way. Andy Wilson has known Libby from Outward Bound days, 40 years and more. Many of the others were members of what Carlos  and the (absent ) Gerry Cox facetiously call the  "Sewing Circle", a bunch of writers, academics and artists fascinated with fine guns. Guy Boyd, who is holding the iconic Purdey, came down from Fort Collins; our first contact was through birds I think, as he flies a pursuit Gyr named Darwin, but I have also worked editing his yet unsold thriller ms. Chas Clifton blogs at Nature Blog, but we have known each other forever; he went to Reed College with Tom McIntyre, is a retired professor of English literature and comparative religion,  knew "Seasonal" writer Ed Engle (who once remarked after a hike in the San Mateos that we had seen a redtail catch a squirrel, but "if it had been twenty yeas ago, we might have seen Mescalito!", and, if memory serves me right, first read me in the rather odd venue of Chronicles, in a nature- themed issue put together by Chilton Williamson and his legendary damned Patagonian conures!

Themes were guns, books, ideas, and food, plus a standing desk of splendid oak for me (thanks to Laramie based novelist Brad Watson); horses (Akhal Tekes) and dogs (Aussies- ours had stayed home) and a little mostly Chihuahua named Rainbow. And GRILLED MEAT-- thanks especially to Carlos, and to Arthur for bringing lovely chile- flavored booze for a marinade.

And of course the Purdey, which is exquisite, not just the finest for its price but one of the finest hammer Purdeys I have ever handled. But, contrary to what everyone seems to think, despite my trade goods and its relatively good price, I do NOT have the full price yet. Perhaps, as the Nature Conservancy's Matt Miller suggests, I should swallow my pride, and try a little crowdfunding-- it looks like now or never... ideas, please!

This set all by Andy W:

Chas sights Broomie with Steve & Carlos in enthusiastic discussion behind

The younger set--Arthur and gunsmith Adam (not in this set, brother Oliver)

Novelist Brad Watson (check his new book on Amazon), Carlos, Steve

Reid with MEAT

We do love our food-- and guns ...

Hunting for "Millenials"

This fine video of deer hunting in Paradise Valley is better than 90% of such stuff:
Wild Harvest from Native Boy on Vimeo.
But it is more remarkable then that, for it is linked to a Huffington Post article, titled "Millenials Must Hunt.

I rather like that imperative-- not "can" or even "should", but MUST. I had reason to cite the link between foodies and locavores to hunting in my recently completed text for the art show, "Wild Spaces, Open Seasons", but I had no idea how far this way of thinking has penetrated...

This year's Boletes

Not a great year-- the southern San Mateos, our main source, were a bit drier than we'd like-- but we got a gallon of dried, first adequate harvest in 8 years. The photos span the trip down and back up the Plains of St Augustin  by the VLA; flowers, like the white poppies, show we have had a monsoon. The album also includes processing, Ataika, out for the ride, and one mushroom you really don't want to eat...

Don't eat this one.

One More Link

Best Product Description: "Icelandic Beer Made From Smoked Whale Testicles". Really.

"We started last year with our first whale beer, Hvalur 1. The health department didn’t want us to produce it at first, but we were allowed to. The beer used whale meal as an ingredient, and it was something new for Iceland. It sold out almost immediately. This year, for Hvalur 2, we wanted to keep the concept, but use a different whale ingredient. We decided to use fin whale testicles... We wanted to create a true Thorrablot atmosphere that celebrates traditional Icelandic food. Every winter, Icelanders gather to eat traditional food that sustained our ancestors for generations. This is very popular here in the countryside, and we wanted the beer to be released at the same time of the festival. The dishes we eat include boiled sheep heads, liver sausage, ram testicles, fermented shark, wind-dried fish, smoked lamb meat, and blood pudding. We thought that Hvalur 2 would fit in well with Thorrablot...

Courtesy of David Z.

Found Data

From The Eskimo Cookbook, Shishmarek Alaska, 1952:

 "Soured Seal Liver:

"Soured seal liver is made in the summer here. Place liver in enamel pot or dish and cover with blubber. Put in warm place for a few days until sour.

"Most boys and girls don't like it. Only grownups and old people.

"I don't like it."


"Loon Soup:

"Take off feathers and clean the loon. Wash, and put into cooking pot with plenty of water. Add salt to taste.

"Do not make the loon soup."

Book Review #2: Rifle Looney News

John Barsness and Eileen Clarke seem like such normal people that is hard to realize at first just how unusual their "lifestyle" is. They are ubiquitous in the hunting and gun magazines, more so than any other couple I have known (I dare say I have known many of the sporting couples of my time). John writes technological piece in vivid and comprehensible English. He writes exotic hunting pieces, many of them on the big game of Africa, Europe, and Alaska, that make you feel that even a poor man might get to do these things.

Best of all, he writes of a life of hunting in his native Montana. As he once said to me, in a manner not entirely satirical, "I am a third generation Montanan... academic." And though I believe that he ended up as I did studying biology, his first published material was a book of poetry. And his mentor in the woods and fields, before he met the old Lakota patriarch Ben Burshia, was the New York transplant Norm Strung.

Eileen's history is even less likely. She came from New York and studied literature at Missoula. She was also a vegetarian. Needless to say, she got over that. I don't think she and John ever eat any domestic meat ever, except possibly at restaurants. Furthermore, she has written some of the most important game cookbooks of our time, ones that can delight the sophisticate but explain everything to the rankest beginner. And she is this knowledgeable about everything. I think she is still the only published cook I know who puts enough fat in game sausage. 

They live the life of the hunt, also the title of one of John's books. They may be the only writers of our generation who have made a decent living entirely as freelance sporting and culinary writers. As publishing changed, they decided that the best way to present and sell their work was by taking ownership and control of all of it, and publishing their own books. You can judge their success by going to their "Rifles and Recipes" website. It's all there -- all the books and cookbooks they have written since they started, and links to other things of note.

Around five years ago, they also started publishing a quarterly online newsletter, Rifle Loony News. At eight dollars for the year, it may be the best bargain in outdoor writing yet. Its eight pages contain some of the best and clearest- headed technical prose on rifles around, presented without the constraints of length that make all magazine writing difficult; all the more so these days, as so-called editors, searching for advertising space, shrink content to 500 word "essays", captions, and bullet-point lists, all written by young staffers who would probably pay to be in print.

Generally John does most of the technicana, and Eileen the food. But don't miss Eileen's gun writing or either of their occasional story-telling. What it is exactly like is sitting down to a long fall dinner with both of them and somehow having a recording of what ensues. It's too bad we don't have an audio version, punctuated by Eileen's whoops of laughter, which stepson Jackson used to claim kept him awake at night, and John's dry interjections. He may have invented the genre of old-style outdoor writing we called "I knew an old dog who died". I also remember telling them about how I shot a blue grouse off a limb when I was first dating Libby, at her... request. I opined that women were more pragmatic hunters than men (and perhaps more enthusiastic; when they first visited me more than twenty five years ago, in Magdalena, Eileen mimed her stalk of what I believe was her first pronghorn through a northern Serengeti of everything from mule deer and bison to sandhill cranes, with  prickly pear sticking into her hands).

John looked at this wife and said "Pragmatic? The first seven sage grouse she shot had skid marks on their breasts." I believe that story is in there too.

So it's fun, for sure; a hunting life lived 365 days a year. It will make you a better cook, and tell you of new products that are really useful rather than just pushed by marketers. As for rifles: John probably has 80 rifles wandering in and out at a time, though I bet fewer than 10 make his permanent list. He shoots constantly, and while he is the gentlest and most genial of men, he will neither praise crap nor take another's opinion as truth without testing it for himself. If you read carefully, and are a typical modern hunter, he will save you a lot more than $8 a year while entertaining you in the process.

Rather than searching for quotes, I will give you Eileen's account of last year's first volume. "Year six started with Eileen's feature on brining wild birds and venison (yes, it's different from chicken and beef) and a to-die-for and easy-to-make Cookie Dough Truffles as well as John's reports on laser range finders, the CZ Model 452 .17Hornaday Rimfire Magnum, 'Guns I Don't Buy Anymore' and lots more."

John also has another new book out, Modern Hunting Optics. I've hardly had a chance to open it in the chaos of the last two weeks, but I will say that it is the most up to date and comprehensible account of that ever-changing subject that I have seen yet. John also can't resist debunking cliches. I always thought that the 25-yard sight-in worked, not that I actually did it. We who read more than do need John's writing to admonish us for intellectual laziness.

It has 200 soft-cover pages and goes for $25 postpaid. Rifle Loony has 264 pages and a color insert as well as black and white illos; it goes for $28.95, media rate shipping. Both are sold exclusively through RiflesAndRecipes.com or from Deep Creek Press, PO Box 579, Townsend, MT 57644; telephone 406-521-0273.

John with Selous buff and CZ .416 which he bought in NM and modified to be like Harry Selby's-- one of his keepers I think...

Seasons 2: Big game & harvest

With a little help from my friends-- Carlos, Brad, Jim. I am not doing big game these days except in a group, hard in NM if you don't pay top dollar. Which is why I may move my meat hunts north if health permits...

All animals here provided feasts including long- gone lion-- see Don Thomas and/ or David Quammen.

And after thought I added locally grown free range pigs, Mark's, still on the hoof, out in front, and a suckling from a previous Thanksgiving. Big game season for me is FOOD first...

                                                            

Jack calls the last "Contemporary Norman Rockwell".

Hemingway, with burger

I have been saving this found image of Ernest and Patrick Hemingway. Patrick, closer to 90 than 80, doesn't look all that different today, but then, he did when he was about 8, too.

This month,  Saveur published a real Hemingway hambuger recipe.We just made two, and I swear it may be the best I ever ate. The only ingredient we lacked was "India Relish".

Book Review #2

I have been promising a review of Paula Young Lee's Deer Hunting in Paris for what seems like forever, and I apologize for taking so long. Part of it was thinking my way through to what I thought exactly or critically. I loved it and found it intensely quotable; on the other hand I found the tone of some passages a little frenetic, full of word- drunk riffing, perhaps fueled by a deconstructionist lit grad student's love of multiple meanings.

Curiously, my friend Gerry's positive but slightly critical review here, which faults her editor for not disciplining her tendency to wander, made me realize that I like such digression! I decided my best way to give you a glimpse of her work was to summarize, quickly, then quote. Read Gerry, then my selections, and you will know whether this sort of book is for you.

Deer Hunting in Paris is called a memoir, though Gerry thinks of it as a journal. Its double subtitles stretch to a Victorian length: "A memoir of God, guns, and game meat; how a preacher's daughter refuses to get married, travels the world, and learns to shoot." Paula Young Lee is an ethnic Korean preacher's daughter from Maine, who when the book opens is living in Paris, France, from which she travels regularly to Paris Maine and Wellesley Massachusetts, to hunt with her boyfriend.

 The book progresses gradually from her childhood through her relationship with her boyfriend (a contrast to her in every way,  Republican to her Democrat, wanting to get married while she doesn't, country to her city), while describing her education as a hunter. Meanwhile, she riffs compulsively about everything from the nature of hunting to cookbooks to the amazing hilarious Maine sellers' newsletter Uncle Henry's and the nature of writing. Some of her observations are serious, some inspired, and some silly, which doesn't mean they're not fun.

Each of these are best demonstrated by quotes. Silly? From Uncle Henry's, a few examples of ads :"I have an unknown sex bearded dragon... Arthritic salmon with flies in box... 3 year old running walker female trained on coyotes cold nose will run nonstop parents were cat dogs... gaggle of running gravelys too old to pull the straps too old to walk behind." Or her quotes from the index of an 1830 cookbook implausibly titled The Cook Not Mad: "BEDBUGS, to keep clear of; COOKIES, nice that will keep good three months; FEMALES' DRESS, to put out when on fire." (I want that book!)

On the writing life: "I wasn't looking for love, drugs, yoga classes, or any other 'girl' narratives attached to stories about free spirits traveling alone. When your trips abroad are being paid for by your father/divorce settlement/ publisher, you're not free. You're expensive."

Pure riffing? How about this one on Squirrel Nutkin? "The death of mice, moles, and minnows don't get most folks riled up about animal cruelty, especially since cute fluffy squirrels are doing the killing. So what if they're offering up lesser animals as sacrifices? It's the only way that the owl won't eat them, for the powerful are blessed by God, and they keep their wealth by doing His will. Only a nut rejects a perfectly profitable system that forces the poor to beg for food and pay a hideous price for the privilege. Hey ho... Nutkin! He's a red-headed rebel, a leader of the autonomous collective, a socialist- communist- Nazi- anarchist- terrorist- tree- hugger out to sow chaos in Eden. Wherefore he's the Devil's handmaiden."

Above all, and past all the silliness, she is drop-dead serious about the nature of hunting. "I now insist on eating birds and mammals, preferably wild ones shot by the man I love but won't marry, their bodies made into meat by our hands joined together. I don't feel guilty about it, sez the girl for whom a bee sting is lethal. Death is the promise. It is an intelluctable truth, for Nature is a murderous mother offering food every where we look... I am hungry. Such is the human condition. We hope and despair, rejoice and revile, celebrate and curse the profane absurdity of being apes rigged up in angels' wings."

"Angels don't eat. Apes covet meat."

Maybe I love it because I am a discursive, digressive, riffing writer myself. But I do, and I am liking it better even as I mine the text for quotes. I'd hunt with her any time, and will look forward to anything she writes.

Wolf Miscellany

I think there is an unstated human obsession with wolves, perhaps because they contain in essence both the genes of our species' best animal friend, and the age -old simultaneous rep as humankind's most visible enemy. Here are a few recent instances.

I have always heard the some of the big Central Asian flock protection dogs are interbred with wolves. As wolves are among their chief adversaries, and the phenotype is so different, I never took the myth too seriously. I was wrong-- apparently there is a surprising amount of fraternizing. One of the scientists involved puts it just that way: ""The shepherd dogs are free-ranging, largely outside the tight control of their human masters. They guard the herds from wolves, which are common in the areas where they are used, but it appears that they are also consorting with the enemy."

The implications of this, in such areas as nature vs nurture, are enormous. Obviously genes aren't all, or the offspring would not be useful. Training and loyalty must come in somewhere.

John Wilson participated in a "round- up" of some of the breeding Mexican wolves held at the Sevilleta, where they needed to capture a pair to send to Mexico. I was happy to see they are really being kept in isolation these days, having seen evidence of the contrary a few years back-- letting in television news helicopter crews for a shoot is not isolation! Also interesting was how passive and shy the wolves are, offering no resistance. The workers formed a line and swept down the hill to where the den boxes are; the wolves retreated to the boxes; the volunteers then opened the den, pinned the wolves, trussed them, drugged them and carried them out. No one, human or wolf, was injured.

Some notes from John (odd format is from his notes):
Far up a canyon, many pens are separated by many gates and fences. This is where the captive Mexican Gray Wolves live and breed.  It is not an area that visitors get to see.  Only staff and volunteers who are working on specific projects enter this area.  The large deep canyon in which the facility rests is filled with large pens enclosed with high chain link fences.  There are half a dozen of these pens, each about a couple of acres.  The pens are reached by passing through anterooms and doors are closed to ensure no escapes...


--> We all created a line with various tools to make us appear larger. Then we slowly walked toward the wolves wooden box den.  The wolves are immediately panicked by human presence.  They are very afraid of us because their contacts with humans have been kept to an absolute minimum. ...  We caught glimpse of the wolves as they ran back and forth and away from us.  
--> The wolves fear humans and try to get away as they would in the wild. Their only option is to get in their den. With serious coaching from the staff the line advanced toward the plywood box den and very quickly the wolves went inside.  A staff member ran to the den and closed the only door.  In both enclosures the wolf pair quickly took shelter in the den.

--> From the first moment access is possible the wolves (a mated pair) are monitored to ensure their safety.   The dens have hinged roofs and side panels.  The staff check on the wolves constantly through the exercise and are alert to signs of stress and overheating.  Long forked control sticks keep the wolves immobile until they are ready to be moved onto the ground cloths where the work will be done

--> With surprising speed, blood sampling, stool sampling, palpation to determine pregnancy, inoculation, and other procedures take place. A radio tracking collar is put on. Cooling ice packs and alcohol for the feet keep the animal from overheating.   

--> In a few minutes the wolf is lifted gently into the travel kennel.  When lifted from the work area to be placed in the kennel the wolf’s tail was curled under its body and no struggle was made.  Hind end first, the wolf was placed in the kennel.  When the animal was safely inside, the muzzle was removed by pulling on a rope and the door was closed.

--> This pair of wolves with the female pregnant will be driven to Laredo and transferred to the Mexican staff who will release the animal in to reserves on that side of the border.  The other pair will cross the border at El Paso and be a part of the endangered species work there.
And then there is what we might call the decadent-- an L.A.  chef's new avant- garde signature dish, "Wolves in the Snow": venison in the image of a wolf kill .

"To pull of the dish, Thornton uses venison to replicate the sort of meat a wolf might eat; the blood is a beet and blackberry gastrique; and the snow is a creamy cauliflower purée. Something, perhaps, to be made for your next date night?"

Here is the recipe:
Wolves in the Snow
From: Craig Thornton of Wolvesden
Serves: 4-6
Venison:
2 lbs. venison tenderloin, trimmed of silver skin and brought to room temperature
salt to taste
pepper (crack a good amount of pepper onto the venison after cooking)
grape seed or canola oil
basting kit: 2 tablespoons butter; thyme; and 2 garlic cloves crushed with the skin left on
1. Heat oven to 300°F
2. Add a decent amount of oil to a large, hot pan.
3. Season venison with salt and a small amount of black pepper. Add venison to the pan and brown on all sides. Then place the pan in the oven for 7-9 minutes, until rare to medium rare (any more and the meat will taste overly gamey and iron-y).
4. Remove pan from oven, and add basting kit into the pan. Once the butter is melted, spoon it over the meat. Baste for about two minutes.
5. Take venison out of the pan and let rest for 8-10 minutes. Season with black pepper.
Cauliflower purée
1 head cauliflower (with a few pieces reserved and left raw)
salt to taste
milk (to cover)
1 tablespoons lemon juice
small pinch of sugar
1. Cut the head into florets, about 2-inch pieces.
2. Place in a pan, cover with milk, and season with salt and sugar. Cook until soft enough to blend.
3. Remove cauliflower from pan, add to blender, and blend. Add cooking liquid as needed, until you have a slightly thick purée. Adjust seasoning to taste, then set aside along with lemon juice (which will be used for final plating).
Raw cauliflower
reserved raw cauliflower
salt to taste
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs lemon juice
small pinch of sugar
1. Chop the cauliflower roughly.
2. Combine remaining ingredients, then use them to dress the raw cauliflower. Set aside.
Blackberry beet "gastrique"
1 cup beet juice (preferably from freshly juiced beets)
1 pint blackberries
Banyuls vinegar to taste
salt to taste
sugar to taste
1 sheet gelatin, or ¼ packet powdered gelatin
1. Place beet juice in small pan and reduce over low heat (a higher heat will give you a bitter flavor).
2. Take your blackberries and put them through a food mill, or crush them and force them through a fine strainer. Do not blend the blackberries, as you do not want the flavor of crushed blackberry seeds.
3. Once the beet juice is reduced by half, add the blackberry purée. Season to taste, adjusting the vinegar and sugar for a sweet-and-sour flavor, adding a little salt to sharpen the flavors.
4. Once seasoned, bloom your gelatin sheet, or powdered gelatin, in water.
5. Lightly heat your sauce, keeping below 120°F (you want it just barely heated enough for the gelatin to dissolve, but also to not kill the raw blackberry flavor).
6. Mix in your gelatin. Once dispersed, adjust seasoning again, then store and set aside.
Douglas fir
2 packets of Douglas fir pine needle tea
1 cup water
sugar to taste
1 sheet gelatin or ¼ pkt powdered gelatin
1. Make Douglas fir tea.
2. Strain, then season with sugar.
3. Bloom your gelatin.
4. Mix in gelatin, let cool, then set mixture aside.
Hen of the woods mushroom
2 package hen of the woods mushroom
grape seed or canola oil
salt to taste
butter to taste
1 tablespoons chopped shallot
1. Heat large sauté pan with oil.
2. Add mushrooms, but do not move the pan or touch the mushrooms. Let them sit, and gain color on one side (by seasoning later, the mushrooms will retain more liquid).
3. Add a spoonful of butter and the shallots, then let cook for a few minutes. Season, and set aside until plating.
Final plating
1. Warm the cauliflower purée, add lemon juice, then adjust seasoning.
2. Take Douglas fir sauce, and put about ½ tbs on the plate.
3. Rip venison apart with two forks, which will act as sharp teeth.
4. Place cauliflower purée on the plate.
5. Lay mushrooms, scattered, on the plate.
6. Lay down the venison, then sprinkle the raw cauliflower, letting it fall wherever.
7. Attack the plate with your blackberry beet "blood." If you don't get "agro," then your plate will reflect that, and who will believe that you, or a wolf, killed this thing?

 Actually it sounds pretty good, but it looks more than a little grim. Cat suggests: "... it would be more authentic if the chef would have slid a rumen sac replica onto the plate." Chas adds "No marzipan intestines?" But Jack, who found and sent it, has the final snark: "Of course, if he weren't a complete pussy he'd be opening joints in Pinedale, Salmon and Reserve instead of L.A., where the local critics could offer meaningful feedback on wolf attack verisimilitude." Ouch!