While I use doves and pigeons for this recipe, you can use ducks, geese, grouse (see note below), rails or really any dark meat animal. The key is to long simmer the tough parts of the animal, and finely grind the tender parts to finish it.
12 to 20whole doves or pigeons, or 4 dark-meat grouse
Salt
A little olive oil
2quartswild game or beef stock
2cupsred wine
16 ounce can tomato paste
3carrots, chopped
3celery stalks, chopped
1large onion, chopped
4clovesgarlic, chopped
1handfuldried porcini mushrooms(optional)
12black peppercorns, crushed
12juniper berries, crushed
12allspice berries, crushed
1star anise(optional)
6whole cloves or 1/2 teaspoon ground
3bay leaves
4 to 6tablespoonsunsalted butter
black pepper to taste
sherry or red wine vinegar to taste
1poundpasta, homemade or dried
Cheese for grating
Instructions
Cut off the breast meat from all the birds and set aside. Salt the carcasses well and coat them with a little oil. Roast the carcasses in an oven at 400F until they are well browned, about an hour.
Put the roasted carcasses along with everything in the ingredient list up to the butter into a large stockpot. Add another quart of water. Pour one more quart of water into the roasting pan you just used and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all the browned bits in that pan. Pour this into the stockpot, too.
Bring the sugo to a simmer and let it cook gently, with no lid and slightly bubbling away, as long as you can stand it, about 4 to 8 hours. While this is simmering, grind the breast meat through meat grinder using a fine die. If you don't have a grinder, you can either hand chop the meat or pulse it in a food processor. Keep this in the fridge as the sugo cooks.
As the sugo cooks, mush everything in the pot down every so often. Then, when you are ready, pour the contents of the pot through a chinois, colander or other strainer with large holes that has been set into a large bowl. Wipe out the stockpot and return the free-flowing sauce to that pot. Use a ladle and mash the meat, vegetables, etc. in the colander to remove as much liquid and good stuff as you can. You want the resulting "cake" in the colander to be dryish, as in no liquid dripping from it. Toss that or feed it to the cats.
Mix the strained stuff in with the free-flowing liquid. Get a large, wide pan like a big frying pan and add the butter. Heat it over medium-high heat, and add the ground meat. Stir well and add a little salt. You want to break up the meat as much as possible and brown it well.
When it's well browned and broken up, pour in the sugo and stir well. Bring this to a boil and reduce it to meat sauce consistency. If you can stand it, the sugo will be better if you let this process take an hour or so. But you can boil it down faster if you want.
Get your pasta water ready by bringing a large pot of salty water to a boil. Start boiling your pasta. As it cooks, add salt, black pepper and vinegar to the sugo to taste. Get a big bowl ready.
When the pasta is ready, put it in the big bowl and add a ladle of sugo. Toss to combine. Give everyone some pasta, top with some more sauce and grate some cheese over it.
Notes
This is a dark meat recipe, so if you are using grouse, use sharp-tailed grouse, spruce grouse, sage grouse or prairie chickens.