Each year I try to cook a new critter, or a part of something I haven’t before. After cooking thousands of pounds of chicken, fish, beef, duck, pork, lamb and all the usual suspects, somewhere along the line I started to crave the knowledge of meat I hadn’t cooked before. This year I had planned…
Critters
Hunting Squirrels with Madison Parker
“Always take the crazy journey” is something my Father says, and is one of the most important pieces of advice I’ve learned from him. Life has been a roller coaster the last few years, but through all the work I have managed to sneak in some fun. My favorite encounter work was work related, but…
How To Cook a Peacock
Bucket list foods, everyone has them. There’s a number of them still on mine, but a little while ago I got to scratch peacock off the list. My girlfriends mother build a farm community in Wisconsin in the 70’s and is still very much plugged in to the local scene. She knows who grows which…
Peacock Thigh Confit, With Chanterelles and Leeks
As I was dreaming up how to make a 4 year old peacock taste good, I knew right away some of it would be made into confit. There’s a transformation that happens with meat with bones in it or ribbons of fat after it’s been seasoned and poached slowly in lard at a low temperature…
Peacock Neck Sausage
American culture has a predilection for looking at exotic food from safe distances. We want to watch shows about eating bugs and snakes, but the majority of us would balk if someone tried to feed them to us. We’re fascinated by foods we deem strange, but that fascination is strictly for the value of the…
Rabbit Braised In Milk, With Black Trumpets And Carrots
Nothing says Easter like a dish with rabbit and carrots. I was just trying to source some new rabbit too, in time for the Easter Brunch menu at the Salt Cellar, but I couldn’t make it work, so it’ll have to wait for next year. I did have a rabbit in the freezer though, as…
Rabbit “Wings”
I pride myself on the ways I find to use scrap and trim. These rabbit “wings” are a perfect example of that. Chopping animals into pieces is a bit of a meditative process for me. It might sound macabre, but the repetition can be calming in a way. Just the other day I found myself…