Butchered the fourth big game animal of the season this morning. A white-tailed deer. Looks big, but cut weight was just under 40 lbs. For context, my calf moose was 100, and Henry’s 2 or 3 year old bull moose was 240. My dad’s cow elk was high 100s-200 I think. So my adventure in cooking venison begins. First lesson … Read More
Mustard Crusted Pan Roasting
Last night I tried a variation on my ‘steak au poivre’. I’d seen Cat Cora on Iron Chef America – Battle Ground Beef [okay, somewhat embarassing] crust red meat by slathering it in Dijon mustard prior to frying. It looked good and sounded good in theory, although I had a hard time picturing how frying mustard wouldn’t make a mess … Read More
‘Steak au Poivre’ with Cambozola Cream Sauce
Haven’t passed on any recipes lately, so I’m excited to share one of my successful creations of the fall season. Plus, I’m always really proud when I figure out a way to serve game meats in a fashion that would please even non-game-eaters. The concept is far more important than the recipe here. The fundamental is a ‘steak au poivre’ … Read More
Butchering
Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know. But I just got back from butchering the calf moose I shot. It yielded 100 lbs of meat – and oddly, exactly 50 of super-lean super-clean burger, and 50 of varying steaks and roasts. It took very close to 5 hours from start to finish, including grinding of burger and cleanup. This is … Read More
More on Food: Wild Big Game
Tomorrow morning I’m up at 5 to head north on a hunting trip for a variety of big game. I’m going to be looking for my first calf moose, but the guys have tags for a whitetail buck, elk calves, cows, bulls – so who knows what will come of it. As my foodiness has exploded over the past few … Read More
‘Mo’ Meat’
I’ve been studying meat cutting again. Got a call yesterday that there will be an elk to butcher this weekend. And next week, I’m going on my first moose hunt where I actually have a tag. I’m planning on having a game dinner here, likely on Nov 11th. I’m hoping to have some home-made fresh sausages, smoked sausages, hickory smoked … Read More
Blind Tasting, and BAD butchering
I just had dinner guests do a blind tasting of two different species of geese to tell me which they preferred. Both were rotisseried, basted in garlic butter with fine rosemary, thyme, sage, and parsley. The final concensus: both were extremely close in flavour and nearly impossible to distinguish one for the other. And both tasted so much like roast … Read More