Pheasant, Grouse, Quail

Pheasant Breast with Parsley Sauce

Seared pheasant breast with a refined parsley sauce I learned from the French Laundry's cookbook. It's an elegant way to sex up a simple seared piece of pheasant.

Pheasant, Grouse, Quail

BBQ Quail Southwest Style

Quail barbecued slow and low with Arizona sauce. What is Arizona sauce, you say? All that is good about the wild foods of the Southwest: mesquite honey, tequila, and wild chiltepin chiles.

Recipe

Venison Tartare

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

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...

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.

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."

Greek

Greek Meatballs

It's not often I remake a five-year-old recipe and change nothing. This Greek meatball recipe -- venison (or lamb), bulgur wheat, oregano and a Greek tomato sauce -- is one such dish. Nice to know some dishes hold up well over time.

Ducks and Geese

Thai Duck Curry

Thai red curry with duck is a standard dish in that country's cuisine -- in fact, it is thought that ducks were first domesticated in Southeast Asia, so this is about as core a duck recipe as you can get. And it's mad crazy awesome.