When I was in Costa Rica I ordered a tuna salad at a little restaurant and throwing the cautionary tales of eating only cooked food to the wind (which I later paid for after drinking a couple drinks with ice) in order to have as big a variety of local food as possible.
The salad was a little dissapointing when it arrived, a little shredded lettuce with some tomato and cucumber, and what I can only assume was canned tuna. It ended up being a lot better than I expected, and made me want to make something light along the same lines when I got back.
The original tuna salad, note the orange limon mandarina around the edge-a lime crossed with a mandarin orange.
Lettuce season is gone here, but there is still lots of fall and winter greens. Eating them raw can be a bit of a challenge though, kale especially is not good raw unless you’re having dino/lacinato kale, and even then you should make sure to take the ribs out. Shredded and seasoned though, dinosaur kale is great to have raw after a quick massage with acid, oil and salt.
Confit: One of the Best Recipes for Small Game Arms & Legs
Ze woodchuck. For small animals, like rabbits, woodchuck or squirrels, you can just break them up, then season. squirrels could be confit’d whole.
Instead of tuna, I used woodchuck confit I‘d packed away in some pork lard before I left. Picked off the bone and warmed up gently in a little of the lard It was preserved in, and it made a great lunch. (For my most popular woodchuck recipe, see my simple groundhog stew here.)
Obviously not alot of people have woodchuck confit laying around, but the confit’d legs of any small creature are fine, and are a great way to use parts that often get thrown away, especially in the case of pheasants and game birds.
I use a small earthenware dish for making quick confit of small animals and poultry. If I want to store it for a couple months, I’ll pick the meat if I need to save space,, put it in a glass jar and press down, then seal very well with a couple inches of melted lard.
Putting my salad together, I rummaged around the apartment turned up some Georgia candy roaster squash and a hunk of Musque de Provence. A quick drizzle of Sam Thayer’s Hickory nut oil, and a couple hickory nuts was a great touch to finish. I had some marinated milkcaps I added too, but they were gilding the lily.
Confit Woodchuck Salad, with Heirloom Squash and Hickory Nut Oil
Equipment
- Small baking dish, like ceramic or cast iron
Ingredients
- 3 oz winter squash peeled and cut into medium-sized pieces, roughly 3/4 cup if you're dicing it
- 1 tablespoon hickory nut oil or walnut oil, or another richly flavored seed oil, like Smude's
- Sprinkling of toasted hickory nuts or walnuts, preferably the same as the oil you're using
- 7-8 leaves of lacinato kale ribs removed, leaves cut into 1/4 inch julienne
- Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
- Fresh squeezed lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, to taste
- 4-5 ounces of confit from a small game animal commerical chicken or pheasant legs make a good sub if no game is available picked from the bones, warmed gently in some of it's fat
- A few salted or marinated milk cap mushrooms optional
Instructions
- 10 minutes before serving, season the kale with the hickory nut oil, salt, pepper, and a good dash of lemon juice. Massage the kale around with your hands in a bowl to break it down a bit, then allow to rest until you're ready to serve. You can massage the kale up to a couple hours ahead of time.
- Season and saute the squash until just done and tender in some of the confit oil. Reserve the squash.
- To serve, toss the kale with the squash and mushrooms, then double check the seasoning for salt and lemon and spread out on a serving or entree plate.
- Scatter the just warm woodchuck confit over the kale, then crack some black pepper over everything, drizzle with a little extra lemon, scatter over some toasted hickory nuts and serve immediately.
woodchuck! I am SO envious. I have a bag of mice in the freezer that perhaps could stand in, but they are so much work…
That’s wonderful. We eat mice now? I was just wondering how to get a woodchuck. And whether I could actually murder one of the way too many cute squirrels we have in the city eating who knows what. Well, acorns of course.
Squirrels would be fine in something like this, any little creature can stand in really.
How do you prepare mice Jacqui? I know the Romans would dip them in honey and poppy seeds and roast them whole. They fattened them first if I remember correct.
I have just browned them in butter and braised them with a little liquid. They get pretty dry without some liquid because they are so small. Sorry sorry, I know I am just over the top weird, but I was home alone with my (equally weird) son when I snap-trapped some mice that were wreaking havoc in my basement and we decided we should eat them rather than just toss them out in the composting area of the yard. I skinned them carefully and prepared the skins to make mouse-skin rugs for doll houses (I am sure this will be all the rage as soon as I can find a way of breaking into the doll house accoutrement market, though probably there will be a flood of Chinese mouse skins as soon as this becomes a must-have item). Then I cleaned them and kept liver and heart (the kidneys are really really small) and flash fried and braised them. I was not up to eating them whole, i.e., uncleaned…
My son sent this recipe to me as he knew I had a woodchuck in the freezer. It was amazing!! We served it at deer camp last Friday. Everyone who tried it liked it, and most people tried it. I’m eating the last bit for lunch today.
Hey that’s great Dave. I’ve really liked everything I’ve made with woodchucks, but anything tastes good confit’d really.
OK, so, I scored a nutria (Myocastor) that appeared to have had a run-in with a car near my office a few weeks ago. I found the nutria but not the car, so I assume the car won. I skinned and cleaned it, which was pretty messy with all the car damage, and froze it in meal-sized portions. Last weekend I organised a group foraging, cooking and eating event for a handful of my students plus my son and some of his friends who are all “vegans who also eat dead things their friend’s weird mom scrapes off the road”. It’s spring here in the Paris region, and we collected ramps, nettles, garlic mustard, wild mustard, the very first hops shoots, young, unfurled hogweed leaves and petioles, cow parsley flowering stalks and piles of mixed salad stuff (oxeye daisy, sow thistle, dandelion, poppy leaves. We made a feast using the braised ribs and front legs of the nutria and a mix of braised vegetables (nettles, hogweed and the mustards) and salad. I didn’t confit the nutria because I did not want to use any pork products (since I have yet to find a pig that has been hit by a car so I have no lard that would be acceptable to the vegans…) but fhe shredded braised meat was really good with the accompaniment of toughish, strong0tasting wild vegetables..
Thanks for the inspiration. I did not MAKE this recipe but this recipe certainly helped me with what I did make.
Jacqui that is so awesome! Some recipes, like doughs and cures, need to be followed to a T, this isn’t one of them. I put the recipes up as a guide, of how I make things, but they’re really just suggestions, a lot of the time. I’ve never had nutria, but I had my eye on a nice roadkill deer the other day as it’s still cold here. More power to you for not letting something go to waste! I can’t wait for all the young green things in my neck of the woods.