Mushrooms

Wild Mushroom Bisque

A recipe for mushroom bisque using wild mushrooms. This is basically real, homemade cream of mushroom soup. You can use any sort of mushroom you like.

Wild Game

Salmis of Snipe

This is about as classic French as you get. Salmis (sal-mee) of snipe: Salmis is where you roast a bird, make a quick sauce from the bones, and serve it with mushrooms and maybe some toast. This is a fantastic snipe recipe.

Recipe

How to Make Verjus

Verjus, or verjuice, is the juice of unripe grapes - wild or cultivated. It is a classic French alternative to vinegar, and it is pretty easy to make. Here's how.

Pheasant, Grouse, Quail

Braised Pheasant with Mushrooms

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.

Recipe

Carbonnade Flamande

Belgian carbonnade flamande is one of that nation's great gifts to world cuisine. It's a dark, rich stew or braise that has a hint of sweet-sour-salty-spicy going on -- and it's fantastic with deer, elk or moose.

Venison

Venison Stroganoff

Stroganoff is a great example of what the Italians call brutti ma buoni, "ugly but good." It ain't the prettiest dish out there, but it's pure comfort food joy. I make mine with venison backstrap, and it's damn good.

Mushrooms

Chanterelle Soup

If Porcini are the kings of the mushroom world, chanterelles are its queen. There are several varieties of chanterelle, ranging…

Recipe

Louisiana Boudin Sausage

Boudin, the ultimate Cajun comfort food. Not quite a sausage, boudin is more like jambalaya in a hog casing. You eat it on crackers or just by hand, right out of the casing. I learned how to make it at Legnon's in Lafayette, and here's my version.

Recipe

Sorrel Sauce

Sorrel sauce. It's so basic, yet so profoundly useful... and awesome. Sorrel tastes like lemonade in a leaf, and both wild and cultivated varieties grow like weeds in any garden. This rich, tart sauce is perfect with pasta, poached fish or poultry, or any other lightly cooked meat.

Charcuterie

Fromage de Tete

Fromage de tete. Coppa di testa. Presskopf. Brawn. Anything but "head cheese." Only that's what this is. This is the head of a wild boar I shot, cooked and pressed into a terrine pan. It's actually damn good. No, really.

French

Classic Sauce au Poivre

Steak au poivre, a/k/a pepper steak, is a French classic. Normally done with beef, this method works great for any red meat, from venison to duck or goose. I use specklebelly goose breasts here.