Recipe

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...

Pasta, Risotto, Gnocchi

Fish Risotto

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

Wild Green Onion Kimchi

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

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.

Wild Game

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.

Wild Game

Rabbit Curry

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

‘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.

Recipe

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.

Foraging

Rapini with Orecchiette and Garlic

On of my all-time favorite vegetables is broccoli rabe, also known as rapini or broccoli raab. Not actually a broccoli, it's actually the unopened flower buds of a kind of mustard. And guess what? Wild mustard works every bit as well as garden variety.

Recipe

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.

Italian

Ossobuco Milanese

This is about as classic Italian as it gets... except I'm using bear shanks instead of veal. Osso buco is one of the best uses of any large shank, be it elk, moose, a big deer or pig, and yes, black bear. Call it "orso buco."

Salmon and Trout

Salmon Chowder

Chowder for me has always meant my mum's clam chowder -- to make it properly, you absolutely must follow an ironclad set of rules with an ironclad set of ingredients. But mum does not make salmon chowder. So when I began making it, I suddenly felt free to play. And play I did.