Autumn has me thinking of flaky pie crusts and warm hearty meals that fill the soul. It also has me thinking of game meats and how much I love them when they are cooked just right. A pie is perfect for a medley of game bird scraps that wouldn’t necessarily make a meal on their…
There are certain recipes that are so versatile, that they are a perfect place to incorporate your favorite meat, especially those extra scraps that you don’t know what to do with. One of my favorite such recipes is fried rice—full of bold flavor, spice and sweetness and a perfect base in which to incorporate duck,…
A cassoulet is an Occitan dish--that part of Southern France where they speak a beautiful and fading romance language, Occitan.It is a stew of beans and meat; sometimes pork, sometimes goose, or mutton or whatever else they please. It is hearty and traditionally cooked in a cassole, a deep earthenware pot with slanted sides.But since…
I spent all day yesterday recipe testing. My freezer had gotten unruly and I had declared that nothing else was allowed in it so that all of the game meat I had collected since September could have a proper home until I could test it all for the "Girl Hunter" book.That has been the rule,…
This is one of the many food items I made out of the gizzards and hearts and liver and legs from my New Orleans duck hunt. It is called a terrine, a Wild Duck Terrine.A terrine is a piece of architecture which takes several days of work. There are many components that go into it…
A few weeks ago I rendered some duck fat.And then I rendered some pig fat.And it was good.Whenever you render fat, you're left over with something we call "cracklin'." It's an automatically southern word. Don't bother putting a proper -ing on the end of it, you're wasting your time. It's cracklin'.The first time I heard…
As you can tell, I’m on a bit of curing kick these days. I’m conjuring my Italian roots. It's just that I had these duck breasts that were just begging to be turned into prosciutto.And I couldn't help myself.Duck prosciutto is simple to make at home, and is a perfect way to store the meat…
I rendered some duck fat and wanted to tell you all about the glorious experience.I plan on using it in all of my recipes, from pie crusts to steaks to milkshakes.Just kidding.Sort of.I made the rendered duck fat and have step-by-step instructions over at my "second home"... I just had too many boxes and filing…