Recipe
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.
Recipe
Behold, one of the most vividly beautiful recipes I've made in a long time. Salmon Swedish style, with vattlingon. It screams Christmas, right? Wrong. This dish can only be made in springtime. Read more to find out why...
Salmon and Trout
One of the cool things about salmon is that it is rich enough to make rillettes with, especially when you use belly meat and the trim from around the bones. This is a pretty classic version, with both smoked and fresh salmon or steelhead trout.
Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi
Beyond the fact that stinging nettles are a superfood, they are just so damn pretty! Blanched, they lose their sting, and take on a lurid emerald. That green makes an exciting pasta -- and a great ravioli filling. Yep, this is a double dose of nettle goodness.
Recipe
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...
Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi
If there is one episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" that sticks with me, it is his trip to Venice. In that episode he has risotto di go, an ethereal dish that hinges on a magical fish broth. I've remade this risotto here with striped bass. It will transport you.
Preservation Recipes
It's wild onion season pretty much everywhere, and there happens to be a cool kind of Korean kimchi that uses green onions. So I made a big batch last month and let it ferment. Lo and behold, it's awesome - especially as an accompaniment to fish.
Salmon and Trout
Butterflied, pan fried trout with the youngest, freshest peas. What could be more springtime than that? Here's how to make crispy fried trout with either fillets or a butterflied fish.
Wild Game
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.
Fish
Butterflying, also known as splitting or kiting a fish, is a basic skill you will want to know, especially when dealing with smaller fish. It keeps the fish whole but largely debones it. The technique is ideal for either quick pan frying or for stuffing the fish, in this case a trout.
Wild Game
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.
Venison
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.
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