Venison
Anyone who knows me will not be surprised at all to learn that the first thing I cooked from the yearling antelope I shot in Wyoming was the shanks. I love me some shank. Since the meat was so light and tender, I cooked the shanks "forty garlic clove" style, like the famous chicken dish.
Asian
Few cultures love to eat squirrel more than the Hmong, a group of Southeast Asian immigrants who arrived here in the US after the Vietnam War. This is a pretty standard stew loaded with fresh, vibrant ingredients: Lemongrass, ginger, chiles and lots of herbs. It's like a squirrel pho.
Sweet Things
Wintergreen ice cream. Why not? I love regular mint ice cream, and after my friend Nate and I foraged for a bunch of wintergreen berries on Cape Ann in Massachusetts a couple weeks ago, I reckoned this would be a cool way to use them... no pun intended.
Recipe
There are a million recipes for pumpkin or squash soup on the Internet, but I'd like to think mine is a little different -- thanks to bacon and creme fraiche. You stew the squash with diced bacon, then puree everything. It's made of win.
Fish
There is no freshwater fish I'd rather eat than a yellow perch, and I recently got a chance to fish for them in Lake Erie, near Cleveland. It was a blast, and to celebrate the Rust Belt city's heritage, I made a Polish-style perch chowder with kielbasa, sour cream and dill.
Foraging
Many of the olives I cure each year are done in a brine. But year after year I've been curing more with lye. I know it sounds scary, but it's not - if you follow these simple instructions. The result is a buttery, firm olive that I actually prefer over the brine cured ones.
Italian
Peperonata is normally a side dish of sweet peppers, onions and tomato; it's like an Italian stir-fry. It is a perfect dish for late fall, when everyone's peppers come ripe. I boosted this recipe up to a main course by adding a little shredded poached pheasant breast. Clean, tasty and easy.
Recipe
Salmon salad. Pretty ordinary, right? My version, as you might expect, comes with a twist: It's not made from salmon fillets. I make my salmon salad by grilling the bones after I've filleted the fish, then stripping the meat from the ribs for this salad. Thrifty, and awesome.
Recipe
Germans eat a lot of smoked meats, including bacon. But I failed to find "authentic" German bacon recipes, so I made up my own. This bacon turned out so well it made me want to dance around in a dirndl. OK, maybe not. But it is damn good.
Wild Game
If you love buffalo wings made from chicken, all it takes to do this with pheasant wings is a little bath in some nice stock. This, my friends, is wild game football food.
Recipe
Deviled eggs are one of those foods I have a hard time controlling myself with. I've been known to eat a dozen at a sitting, and even though I know I'll feel ill afterwards, I can't stop eating them. These deviled eggs, made with smoked salmon, are especially good.
Wild Game
Just because you've skinned and breasted your doves does not mean you can't make beautiful food with them. This is a Spanish-inspired food
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