A Gourmet's Book of Beasts

A Gourmet's Book of Beasts is subtitled:

"Intriguing recipes for 57 different meats - with a natural history of each animal, its portrait from the world's finest art collections, and its culinary bibliography."

Alas, Faith Medlin published this cookbook/history in 1975. The beautiful objects from galleries and collections are reproduced in simple black and white. One does not get the full regal drama of crystal bowls engraved with bison or porcelain crab dishes or silver salt cellars of oyster shells.

This rather poor photo of a silver spoon with a bowl in the form of a scallop

by Antonio Gentility da Faenza pales in this form. Unfortunately, a clear photo does not exist in the Metropolitan Museum's database.

 

Still, A Gourmet's Book of Beasts offers up more than an odd recipe for the unfamiliar and familiar edible beast. You will learn about the animal. You will see art and artifacts associated with each animal. And, you will find a bibliography of cookbooks with an unusual array of recipes.

While rattlesnake or reindeer might not be you cup of tea, these scallops are quite easy and a bit exotic with the chilled fiddleheads.

Scallops with Fiddleheads

2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen fern fiddleheads
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 pounds fresh scallops
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons dry vermouth
paprika

Combine water, vinegar, sugar, and salt in stainless steel or enameled sauce pan and bring to boil. Drop fiddleheads into boiling liquid. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Drain and chill.

If scallops are the large variety, cut into 1/4-inch slices. Dry thoroughly. Combine flour, salt, and pepper in plastic or paper bag. Toss scallops in bag until thoroughly coated. Melt butter in large skillet. Over medium heat, sauté scallops for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add vermouth, reduce heat, and simmer 5 more minutes, stirring gently. Divide onto 3 plates and sprinkle each serving with paprika. Serve with chilled fiddleheads.

 

You will probably never run across a tiger steak at the local Kroger's, but for your favorite food historian, A Gourmet's Book of Beasts is a welcome delight.

 

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Duck, Duck, Goose

How To Spot  An Only Child

To spot an only child, yell "duck" in a crowded room.  People raised with sibling will intuitively cover their head and crouch.  An only child will raise its head and ask, "Where is the duck?  What kind of duck is it?"

Hank Shaw offers up a lot of answers to the only child and others in his book Duck, Duck, Goose.   Duck, Duck, Goose is Shaw's second book.  Hunt, Gather, Cook is one of our favorites.  (And, as we have said before, we were absolutely sure, we had written about that book and it seems we have not!  Shame on us.)

So, you always order duck in a restaurant, but rarely cook it.  You have hear all those scary stories of how duck is soooooo fatty, and it will be greasy and tough and gamy and on and on.  Not true.  Not if you follow Shaw's hints and tips.  Just take a breath, read the recipes and you will be on your way to making a perfect, succulent fowl.   Not to mention that Shaw has always been a great defender of our favorite fowl part, the gizzard.  We are definitely making a big batch of corned gizzards. 

The adventurous among us can grab a gun and shoot your own duck, which Shaw often does.  Not the shooting type?  Well, just pick up a duck at the grocery store. It will be easier than you think.  Either way, you will quickly learn that duck does not taste like chicken, but it might just be that easy to cook.

Who doesn't love a good duck confit.  If it seems another of those "too much trouble" recipes, Shaw's Crock Pot recipe will have you whipping up confit this Saturday.  From a personal standpoint, we feel that any meat braised to the point of falling off the bone perfection is the best sauce for a pasta.  Duck Confit is no exception.

Duck Confit with Pasta and Lemon

Make sure you have all of the ingredients prepped before you start cooking, as this dish comes together quickly. Have the water boiling, and give it plenty of salt; you want it to taste of the sea. 

 

2 confit duck legs

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 tablespoon duck fat, or as needed

kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound fresh tagliatelle

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Grated lemon zest, for garnish

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil.

Meanwhile, pick all of the meat off the duck legs and reserve the skin. Tear the meat and skin into small pieces. Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Add the butter, 1 tablespoon duck fat, and the duck meat and skin. Turn the heat down to medium.

Generously salt the boiling water, then add the pasta and stir well. 

Add the garlic to the sauté pan and mix well. Watch the garlic: the moment it begins to brown, turn off the heat. When the pasta is al dente, drain it into a colander, then

add it to the sauté pan. Alternatively, use tongs to transfer it from the boiling water to the sauté pan. Turn on the heat to medium and toss the pasta to coat well with all of the ingredients, adding more duck fat if the mixture seems too dry. Season with pepper, add 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice, and toss again. Taste and add the remaining 1 tablespoon lemon juice if you want. Serve immediately, garnished with the lemon zest.

On a personal note:   On three separate occasions we have missed meeting Hank Shaw.  It seems we are always a day early for one his readings and frankly we are getting sick of it.   We were very happy to actually see Hank Shaw hunting with Andrew Zimmern.  We watch a lot of cooking shows and would like to say that Hank Shaw should have his own show.   He has a different point of view, he has won a James Beard Award, he has a cool website. so come on, give him a show.

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The Sporting Wife

In our ongoing love of game cookbooks, we recently snagged a lovely copy of The Sporting Wife: Game and Fish Cooking.  Barbara Hargreaves set out to make game cooking a bit more diversified.  She published The Sporting Wife and The Complete Angler's Wife, both to favorable reviews.  After receiving recipes and suggestions, she combined the two in a large revised edition of The Sporting Wife.

Hargreaves was striving for something a bit more than the usual roasted joint.  The book is filled with vintage engravings, mostly by Thomas Bewick whose 1790 work A General History of Quadrupeds brought the engraver much fame.   She included a special section on sauces and a bit of advanced bird anatomy to determine the age and viability of of the hubby's catch.

The book is a very good take on cooking whatever might get dragged in through the mud room.  It has the solid feel of a pair of Wellies.  One might imagine Queen Elizabeth or even maybe Queen Victoria pointing out a recipe to be served at Balmoral.

As you know, we have a profound love of giblets, and while the rabbit is lacking our favorite gizzard, we were taken by this recipe.


Savory Rabbit Giblets

Head, split in half lenghtwise
Neck
Rids
Heart
liver
lungs
kidneys
12 oz. fat bacon
2 oz. plain flour
1 onion
1 pint water
lemon juice of red wine
Salt and pepper
Sugar

For those who like to finish up all the odds and ends, this is a good way to make a savoury supper dish.  Sweet and sour.

Wash the giblets and cut into small pieces, fry with the diced onion and the chopped bacon, dredge in the flour, stirring all the while and fry until brown. Then add the water and season well.  Simmer gently until the meat is tender.  Just before serving, season the gravy to taste with lemon juice or red wine and sugar, remove bones and serve with lots of mashed potato.


I admit to being a little confused by the frying  THEN dredging instruction.  I think she means to fr y the meats and onion together and as it is getting done, add the flour.  This is a hard recipe to replicate unless the hubby is bringing home the rabbit, as most domestic rabbit in America is lacking in that nice bag of giblets stuffed inside.

for the hunter in the house or that little lady that cooks for him, this is a great book for a hostess gift or and other holiday for that matter.

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Girl Hunter

What makes a hunter? Some hunters learn it from family and some through extended family. Georgia Pellegrini was farm girl in the afternoon and Manhattan school girl during the day. She left Wall Street for the kitchens of Blue Hill at Stone Barns. After having to actually kill food that was on the menu, she began an exploration of what it actually means to kill your own meat and how she became a girl hunter.

Girl Hunter is one of those hybrid memoir/cookbooks. I admit that I usually am not very fond of this type of work, as I feel the recipes get the short shrift. that was not the case in Girl Hunter. Pellegrini provides a thoughtful and rational insite into hunting. One soon finds that hunting is one of those sports that engenders some colorful characters and Pellegrini finds her fair share of them.

The book also explores that facet of hunting as not just a sport, but for many, a necessity for putting food on the table. Pellegrini puts some fine food on the table. I am most anxious to try her recipes for javelina, the famed "skunk-pig" found in the Texas countryside. We Southerners are always on the hunt for different pork.
Alas, I do not see Texas in my near future.

I decided to offer up something that even the non-hunter might try. Granted, wild turkey bears no resemblance to the turkey breast found in your grocer's freezer, but give this one a try.

Whiskey Glazed Turkey Breast

6 tablespoons butter
1 turkey breast, skin on and brined
salt and pepper
8 to 10 strips of bacon, or equivalent in lard (for breasts without skin only)
1 cup turkey stock
3 tablespoons honey
6 tablespoons whiskey
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1. Preheat the oven to 325F. In an ovenproof skillet or Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter until it begins to bubble. Sprinkle the skin of the brined turkey breast with salt and pepper. If the breast is without skin, wrap it with bacon or lard and fasten with toothpicks or kitchen twine as needed. Place the breast skin side down in the butter, sprinkle the underside with salt and pepper, and let the skin brown for about 5 minutes. Turn it over and add the stock. Cover with foil or a lid and transfer to the oven.

2. In a separate skillet, melt the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Whisk in the honey until well incorporated. Add the whiskey along with the orange zest and juice, and cayenne and whisk together. Turn the heat to low and let the glaze reduce by half. Turn off the heat and set aside.

3. Once the turkey has cooked for 10 minutes, brush with half of the glaze and recover. Roast for 20 more minutes, brush with the remaining glaze, leave uncovered and increase the temperature to 400F. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes more, or until the internal temperature reads 140F to 150F.

4. Remove the turkey from the oven, cover with foil for 10 minutes before slicing, and serving.

For anyone who like game or a tall tale of hunting, Girl Hunter is for you. Check out more on Pellegrini's official web site.

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Good Poultry and Game Dishes

In his day, Ambrose Heath wrote and translated more than one hundred works on food. We have a few of them and you might remember that we have featured several of them in the last few years. Good Poultry and Game Dishes falls into another of our favorite categories, game cookbooks.



First, let me say that we cook chicken every single Sunday and on other days of the week, too. Second, let me say that living with a thousand cookbooks often means that is nothing new on the recipe front. If you can eat it, we have read a recipe for it. In fact, we have read recipes for numerous things that you wouldn't put in your mouth in a million years!



So while perusing Good Poultry and Game Disheswe ran across several recipes for hazel hen. What exactly is a hazel hen. Here was something quite new and in need of research.





The hazel hen is a small little grouse. They are found in England and central Europe. The males are quite the little crooners and evidently sing as a way to defend their breeding territory. There are a few recipes out there for this type of grouse and here is Ambrose Heath's.

Hazel Hens, Potted



Cut three or four hazel hens into neat pieces and slice the breasts. Put a few slices of fat bacon into a terrine, and add some pieces of the bird with a bay-leaf, one or two cloves, a little cinnamon and chopped onion and salt and peppercorn, covering with more bacon and repeating the layers until the terrine is full, then pour in enough light red wine nearly to fill the terrine, put on a lid or a pastry top, and bake in a very slow oven for five to six hours. Serve cold.

In a 1958 Sport's Illustrated article, we are told that "21" is the place to go for fowl of all kinds including the hazel hen:

"But Scottish grouse is only one of a large number of game specialties which have helped to establish the considerable reputation of "21." Chukar partridge, mallard and other species of duck, hazel hen, Mexican quail, young Canadian snow goose and Norwegian ptarmigan are other available items in season. Larger game includes venison, of course (the ragout of venison St. Hubert is outstanding), reindeer, moose, elk, hare from Canada and, occasionally, saddle of antelope. Also, of all things, bear. Gary Cooper, I was told, on his visits to New York never misses ordering the grilled black bear chops."

Ambrose Heath has nary a recipe for bear in Good Poultry and Game Dishes, but there are about 99 other books we could try.

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Goat Meat Milk Cheese

It seems such an obvious statement: 70% of the red meat eaten in the world is goat meat. Duh. And yet, it never crossed my mind. I have eaten my share of goat meat...OK, clearly not my share as 70% of my red meat hasn't been goat. I have had a substantial amount of goat cheese.

Now one might think that writing a cookbook about a protein we Americans (and I use the term lightly) use sparsely would give the authors and air of superiority. We have all picked up those "holier than thou" cookbooks when the author manages to be condescending and didactic all at the same time. Well, Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough is not in that category. The authors are accessible and funny and informative... did I mention funny? If you never even look at a goat, you will get a big kick out of this book. (And if have read as many stuffy and overbearing cookery books as I have, you will be thrilled at the light yet thoroughly authoritative prose.) And where else, one might ask, will you ever find a cookbook that mentions, even in passing, Derrida?

The main problem with goat (aside from its slightly gamy aroma) is that the darn thing is bony. But hey, you eat quail and fish and they are bony. Got meat is also a mere 244 calories for a 6-ounce serving and less than half the fat of its nearest low fat challenger -- chicken. this could definitely start a Jenny Craig trend.

The book covers that gamut from sweet to savory or rather savory to sweet. There are stews, curries, moles and there are blintzes and brownies (my very favorite brownie is one swirled with goat cheese) and several preparations for cheesy concoctions like fondue and dip. Here is an accessible recipe for goat cheese dumplings. How can you beat that.

Baked Spinach-And-Goat-Cheese Dumplings

One 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
8 ounces fresh chevre or soft goat cheese, at room temperature so that it’s very creamy
4 ounces hard, aged goat cheese, such as goat Gouda, finely grated and divided
3 large egg yolks
3/4 cup semolina flour, plus more for rolling the little dumplings
1 tablespoon finely minced chives or the green part of a scallion
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon goat butter (or unsalted cow butter, if you must)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 cup regular or low-fat goat milk (or cow milk, if you must)
2 tablespoons dry white wine or dry vermouth

1. First, grab the frozen spinach in small handfuls and squeeze as hard as you can over the sink to get rid of as much excess moisture as you can. Put the bundles in a big bowl and use a fork to separate the spinach back into bits and threads.

2. Whisk in fresh chevre or goat cheese, half the grated hard goat cheese, the egg yolks, semolina flour, chives, salt, lemon zest, black pepper, and nutmeg. You want a creamy but somewhat stiff mixture, because you’re going to form it into balls.

3. Sprinkle a little more semolina flour onto a clean, dry work surface. Pick up a little bit of the spinach mixture, a little smaller than a golf ball. Roll this in the semolina flour to form an oblong ball, sort of like a football but without the pointed ends. Set aside and continue rolling more, adding more flour to your work surface as need be (but not too much, or the balls will turn gummy). You’ll end up with about 24 dumplings.

4. Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add 5 or 6 dumplings. Lower the heat so the water barely simmers. Poach for 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer dumplings from the pot to a 9-by-13-inch baking dish or an oblong roasting pan. Then add 5 or 6 more dumplings to the pot and repeat the poaching process again — and again — until all the dumplings are done and in the baking dish or roasting pan. Why not just toss them all into the water at once? Because they’ll crowd the pot and stick together. You want enough space so they can bounce around freely in the simmering water.

5. Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees.

6. Melt the butter in a small saucepan set over medium-low heat. Whisk in the all-purpose flour. Whisk over the heat for 30 seconds. Then whisk in the milk in dribs and drabs, a little bit each time to form a paste — and then more at a time, although never more than a slow, steady drizzle. Once all the milk is in the pan, whisk in the wine, raise the heat to medium, and whisk until bubbling and slightly thickened, just a minute or so.

7. Pour this sauce over the dumpling balls in the baking dish or roasting pan. Sprinkle the remaining grated cheese over the dish. Bake until the sauce is bubbling and just beginning to brown, about 15 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before serving.

Mark my words, before long you will be seeing nifty goat trucks dotting the food scene and at least one NYC restaurant that offers up all goat, all the time. And you will have Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough to thank.

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Doves (not a cookbook per se)

Over at the blog To The Manner Born, I read a wonderful entry about dove hunting, which is a great way to spend an autumnal day in Alabama. When I commented on the post, I got a nice note from the author, David Bagwell. I also got a picture of the day's spoils and his wife's recipe for said spoils. (And now I would like to say how truly upset I was to have not been invited to share in the bounty... but I digress.)

Here is David's note on the recipe.

Here are my dove breasts, stuffed with basil goat cheese my wife made from organic goats, organic jalapeño and wrapped in bacon and grilled!

Seriously, he hunts doves and she makes goat cheese, these are people to party with, I must say.

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The Derrydale Cookbook - Game

In 1927, Eugene V. Connett, III established The Derrydale Press. It was the preeminent publisher of sporting and outdoor books in America in the first half of the 20th century. In the course of its history, The Derrydale Press published 169 titles. They are some of book collectors most elusive prizes. In the 1990's, many of the titles were reprinted, causing another big push of collecting. The press did a pair of cookbooks in the late thirties. Written by Louis de Gouy, whose book on ice cream we featured earlier, the two volumes featured game and fish.

In the book on game, de Gouy braises, roasts, bakes, fries, terrines and jugs a wide cornucopia of critters, big and small. There are squirrels and deer, muskrats and elk, and pheasants, snipe, grouse and quail, just to get the ball rolling. There three marinades for bear, a ton of sauces and enough drinks and punches to have the cook sauced. Here is a delightful recipe for partridge. Fresh out of partridge? I rather think some nice chicken thighs would work beautifully in this recipe.

Braised Partridge with Sour Cherries

First roast a cleaned, wiped partridge, or as many as required, seasoned inside and out with salt and pepper, for 15 minutes in a hot oven, basting generously with melted butter. Remove from the oven and turn the bird into a generously buttered baking dish. Add a half dozen red or white sour cherries (canned), 2 tablespoons of cherry juice, and 3 medium-sized mushrooms, cooked in butter. Adjust the cover as tightly as possible, bake in a moderately hot oven (375F) for 20 minutes. Serve in the baking dish.

Now that you have eaten, get out there and scour those used book shops. TOMORROW: FISH

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