Italian
This is an Italian classic, sugo d'anatra, or duck ragu. It's a meaty pasta sauce that uses slow-cooked duck legs or wings for the meat, and is damn good with any pasta or polenta, but especially good with pumpkin-ricotta gnocchi.
Venison
Venison steaks served with a fantastic wild rice pilaf. It's an unusual pilaf, made when I decided to play a game of bouncing flavors, colors and textures off each other. Want to learn how to do this? Read on.
Featured
It is Super Bowl Sunday. Every year before the Big Game, I watch the movie "Any Given Sunday," which has the greatest motivational speech I've ever heard. It's about the inches between success and failure, between being great and failing. Those inches matter in all things, not just football.
Fish
This is my homage to the North Country, where wild rice and pike, walleye and perch are king. These fish cakes are made with pike from Manitoba, but you could use any white fish. Mixed with mustard, herbs and wild rice, they are easy to make and wonderful to eat.
Ducks and Geese
This is the OG method of roasting a duck, the Old School way that will give you crispy skin, but a fully cooked breast meat. I only roast ducks this way when they're a) really fat, and b) I feel like making a kick-ass sauce. Got a fat duck? Roast it this way.
Mexican
Pozole is a classic Mexican soup, and like many Mexican dishes, it comes in red and green. I like both, but this is the green version I make with pheasant or wild pig, hominy, tomatillos, green chiles and avocado. Damn good use for pheasant legs, if I say so myself.
Mexican
If you've read this space for very long, you know how much I love meatballs. One reason is because pretty much every nation makes them. This is a Mexican classic, albondigas al chipotle. Yep. chipotle venison meatballs, baby!
Venison
If you hunt deer, you need to know this recipe. It's a staple here at the house, making a fantastic, lean version of corned beef that's great for sandwiches, with cabbage or in hash. You will find yourself making it all the time...
Featured
Fat is not the enemy. We treat it as so because as humans, we so crave it that we've spent millennia making it more and more accessible to us. In so doing we've lost sight on just how precious and wondrous fat is in the wild world. Only with a diet hinging on game and fish does this come into focus
Pheasant, Grouse, Quail
If you've never braised pheasant thighs, you're missing out. Unlike the drumsticks, which can be fiddly, the thighs on pheasants (and wild turkeys) are sublime when slow cooked. This recipe is based on a French one and uses lots of mushrooms.
Charcuterie
Merguez sausages are the signature link of North Africa, which, as you probably know, is a Muslim region -- so, no pork. That makes them a perfect fit for an all-venison sausage! This is a pretty traditional merguez recipe, full of flavor and spicy, but not overly hot.
Mushrooms
The professional mushroom pickers call this time of year Winter Pick. It's a time of abundance here in Northern California, a time when you can conceivably come home with 20 different kinds of edible mushrooms. It's my favorite time of year.
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