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.
French Recipes
I learned French cuisine early on in my cooking career, so there are more than 60 French recipes for fish, seafood, wild game, edible wild plants and mushrooms here on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.
French recipes find their way into the cuisines of many other nations, largely because for a long time, French cuisine was considered the greatest in the world.
A great many of the techniques in classic French cooking are still used today, often reimagined for modern times, but using the same bedrock skills, like making a consommé, or rillettes, or a terrine.
Fish, game and edible wild plants and mushrooms are featured in a lot of French recipes -- which is why you'll find more than 60 recipes here.
There's everything from 40 clove garlic pheasant, to a basic rillettes recipe, to classics like coq au vin made with grouse or pheasant, to duck a l'orange and a sexy chanterelle soup.
The Latest
Classic Salmis of Duck
This is a venerable dish, one of the great classics of French cuisine. Napoleon could have eaten this, as could Victor Hugo, Camus or Charles de Gaulle. Escoffier certainly ate salmis, and my recipe is based on his.
Pheasant Confit
Most of us know about duck confit — where you salt duck legs, then slow cook them in duck fat until they are meltingly tender, then you crisp them up in a hot oven? Yeah, that’s confit. There’s a reason it’s all over restaurant menus, but check it: This process works great with pheasant and other upland game birds, too!
French Fried Frog Legs
We had some epic frog gigging last week up at Lake Tahoe. Yeah, I know, not a place you’d associate with hunting bullfrogs. But that just made it more fun. And once we got ’em, I just had to cook the frog legs in the classic French method. Call me a frog, eh?
Salmon Rillettes
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.
Pan Fried Trout with Peas
Ya gotta love ice fishing in California. First of all that it exists, second that you can fish through 2 feet of ice wearing a T-shirt, third that you can catch gorgeous rainbow trout. And when you do, you should treat them simply – with brown butter, parsley and lemon.
Pheasant with Apples
There is something about the combination of poultry and apples that just sings. This dish, Pheasant Normandy, is loaded with apple flavor and is larded with butter and cream. It requires no special technique or esoteric ingredients — it’s pure comfort food, and all it asks of you is a little time.
Crawfish Bisque
Nothing says luxury like a smooth, creamy lobster bisque. Sadly, I live 3,000 miles from Maine lobsters, but I do live near some of the best crayfish spots in America. And lemme tell ya, this crayfish bisque is every bit as good as one made with their big brothers.