Barbecued Quail with Arizona Sauce
Quail barbecued slow and low with Arizona sauce. What is Arizona sauce, you say? All that is good about the wild foods of the Southwest: mesquite honey, tequila, and wild chiltepin chiles.
Chinese Red Cooked Bear
Few dishes speak to the heart of Hunan province in China as does red-cooked pork. It is a masterfully slow-cooked stew of pork belly, and in this case either wild boar or black bear belly, gently transformed into melting magic. It’s one of the best Chinese dishes on this site. I guarantee it.
Venison Tartare
Beef or venison tartare is the “trust fall” of the culinary world: Raw meat and a raw egg yolk. If your ingredients are not impeccable, things can go very, very wrong. But done right, this is at once a primal and exciting little appetizer.
Duck Breast with Turnips and Rye Spaetzle
This is my version of a dish I had at Perbacco in San Francisco a few weeks ago. It’s so simple, but is a great combination. And if you’ve never made homemade spaetzle, it’s easier than you think.
Buttermilk Fried Quail
If you like fried chicken, you’ll love fried quail. This is a Southern style recipe, where you marinate the quail in buttermilk, then fry it in a cast-iron pan. Pure Southern comfort food…
Wild Turkey Carnitas
Quite possibly the best thing to make with wild turkey drumsticks and wings, which can be uber tough and stringy. Braise them slowly until the meat falls off the bone, then pull the meat, crisp it and serve it in tacos or burritos.
Hare Krishna
When you make an Indian rabbit curry, you kinda just gotta call it “Hare Krishna,” especially if you use actual hare, as I did. This is, more or less, a south Indian curry.
Food Plot Venison Stew
There is a cook’s maxim that goes something like, “if it grows together it goes together.” Well, this venison stew puts that into practice. Almost everything in this stew can be found in commercial deer “food plot” seed mixes. Shoot the deer, and serve it with the field you shot it in.
Partridges with Cranberries and Rosemary
This dish, inspired by Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson of Faviken, is nothing short of a revelation in its simplicity and in the technique of cooking the partridges. If you are an upland bird hunter, or like to eat Cornish hens or quail, you must read this.
Homemade Polish Kielbasa
Few sausages are as iconic as Polish kielbasa. There are as many variations as there are cooks — even an official government-approved recipe, which I used as my inspiration. This one is pure smoky awesomeness.
