Tag Archives: squirrel confit

Making Squirrel Cassoulet: Part Two

Posted on by
4

A few of my cabbages in the garden are no more. Which might beg the question, why am I making a confit out of squirrel instead of rabbit? Because the rabbits in the vegetable patch dine on the efforts of my hard work at night. On those occasions when they allow themselves to be seen cavorting in daylight, I am carrying a hoe, not a shotgun. Meanwhile squirrels (unfortunately for them) expose themselves to all manner of unlucky timings that shorten their mortality, from being indecisive road-crossers to standing on a limb barking while the hunter nearby is relieving himself. So, alas, no rabbit for my dinner, only squirrel … but only for now, sweet bunny, only for now.

Why confit and cassoulet? Let’s start with the obvious. They are each beautiful French words that we love saying for the reason that we can actually pronounce them. Indeed, being linguistically challenged myself in all languages, including my native, this may be the main reason that I fixed this dish: the recipe provided me the confidence to roll both words off the tongue and into a conversation. They also are intended to sound, in their Frenchiness, highly palatable and highly desirable (which also leads to highly priced surcharges at whatever froufrou bistro you land in for your date night). Hiding plain foods under clever foreign names that often translate essentially to the same dishes as their American counterparts is a time-honored sport of our restaurateurs to inflate their bottom line.

Think about it: Does simply uttering the word pâté not encourage more guests to sample my efforts than if I had called it what James Villas does, Pork Jowl and Liver Pudding? Would some of you not be reading this (if anyone is indeed reading it) if I had called my dish Salted Squirrel in Bean Stew?

So now let’s reduce the two words — confit and cassoulet — to their essentials. A confit is an ingredient (and a process) made by curing a piece of meat in salt, then cooking it in a fat for long hours, before eventually storing it submerged in the same. It keeps for months until needed. Meat, salt, fat. What could be simpler (and taste better)? The one-dish cassoulet is your average Monday night bean dinner, except it contains multiple versions of salt and fatted proteins, all combined to take you on a supercharged highway to a coronarial destination both blissful and corpulent. (Though, the French are all reported to be skinny, so better take up cigarettes.)

As a personal philosophy of cooking, I don’t hold much truck with theories of cultural appropriation, but I do believe strongly that one should try to cook with local ingredients. Adapt any recipe to what you grow and what is in your larder. Don’t you be buying no champagne vinegar when what you have on hand is a perfectly good pear vinegar that you brewed. The beans you harvested this summer in your garden (in my case butter beans) will do just fine. Need salt pork? How about that freshly cured jowl under the stairs. Link sausages? Well, thanks to the deer hunting acumen of a favorite nephew coupled with the curing skills of a local Mennonite butcher, both in South Louisiana, I have them by the coils.

Will the resulting dish be a traditional Toulouse cassoulet? Certainement pas. Just as the French settlers in Louisiana made their beloved boudin with ingredients found at hand, good cooking in East Tennessee also reflects place. Food should never be confined to a straightjacket, with one exception … my chicken sausage gumbo. (Perfection is not to be trifled with.) But truly, all that really matters in the end is that you cook your meals with love for friends and family.

Ms. Ronni “I declare” Lundy, in her well-written cookbook Victuals, an Appalachian journey with recipes, is the source for the cassoulet that I cooked. With many modifications, of course. She is also the author of the instructional injunction to not let your “fat get frisky” when cooking the confit. Those are words to live by.

………………………………………………………………………….

Reading this weekend: A Factotum in the Book Trade (M. Kociejowski), a dense, yet delightful read about a life spent in the antiquarian book trade in London. Written from the perspective of an employee, not an owner. And, The Reactionary Mind (M. Davis), a distributist stand against modernity.

Making Squirrel Cassoulet: part one

Posted on by
8

The essentials:

  • One hip flask of bourbon
  • One cigar
  • A single shot .410 shotgun with shells
  • A beautiful fall day

For a successful cassoulet I find that it always comes down to the choice and use of proper ingredients and tools (and I speak with the wisdom gained from the experience of cooking it once before). So, rest easy with that assurance and let us begin your instruction, with the hunt.

First essential: It has been my private contention that there are not too many bad bourbons in this world. It is for this reason, of course, that we have been, and God willing remain, a mighty people. For a mighty people need a mighty liquor; but only if consumed in moderation and in safe circumstances, such as during a fall hunt, with a loaded gun, for squirrel. The conveyance of that liquid is by means of the hunter’s hip flask, a slim half-pint meant only to sustain (not inebriate) one for the rigors of the field and wood. It should be filled with whatever whisky is ready to the hand. In my case it was a bottle of Four Roses that drew my eye and steadier grasp.

Second essential: Cigars on the other hand can range from the sublime to the truly awful. I was gifted on my recent birthday a couple of dozen cigars by friends that validated the truth of that full range of experience. But when my beloved instructs guests to bring a bottle of wine or whiskey, and/or cigars as gifts, I can be considered blessed before the guests even darken the door. Even for the lifetime supply of Sambuca, in the form of one bottle, that I was made a present of by a dear friend, I will vow to remain humbled and truly appreciative. But we speak of cigars, meaning, that it was a nice fat robusto that I selected, from the fair isle of Hispaniola, to accompany me for this trip into our woods; leaving a birthday gifted vanilla flavored abomination in the humidor (double bagged for the safety of its neighbors) to share, no doubt, with a future visiting nephew.

Third essential: The firearm of choice, and I do have a selection to draw on here, was, as in most instances, the boy’s single shot .410. And for that fact, I do not blush. Hunting the wily tree chicken, the high wire rodent, requires a light touch and a fast swing. I have tried with both 12- and 16-gauge shotguns with modest results. The shorter barrel of the .410 (aka a 37 gauge and sometimes as a 67) gives a wider pattern of shot when one is taking a quick aim. As for instance when, while I had a lit cigar in my mouth while also simultaneously taking a whiz, a gray squirrel popped out thirty feet from me barking on a limb. I was able to successfully cock the gun, swing, shoot, kill, then “reholstering” myself, collected the game, all while taking another puff or two.

Fourth essential: It is, and you may have already picked up on this, somewhat of a sacrilege to be walking and smoking (a cigar, anyway) on a fine day. I agree. Each are separately meditative. However, there were already two squirrels in the game bag at my back when I sat down to take a restorative nip and snip the end of the cigar. The green woods before me were speckled in salmon, reds, and golds on what was one of the most beautiful of Tennessee fall afternoons. The air was a crisp 58 degrees. All was at peace as I sat on the log and reflected… sat and reflected, that is, that my bladder was full. Which is when I stood, answered that call, and shot the third and final target for the cassoulet dish I had planned.

With that success I sat back down, finished the cigar, had another sip from the flask and thought, you know this farming life ain’t half bad. Finally, when with a couple of inches of gray ash remaining of the cigar, I stubbed it out, stood and returned down the wooded path to our home to clean my harvest.

(Next time, part two, in which the steps in preparing a confit of squirrel and cooking the cassoulet will be laid out with the same clear detail as today’s lessons on hunting.)

Homestead Weekend: the productive arts

Posted on by
1

Homestead Weekend: a weekend devoted to the productive arts (22 degrees this morning)

1. Squirrel Confit: Every New Year I make confit with the goose legs from our roast goose. It occurred to me that one could make a confit (meat cured in salt and preserved in lard) with anything at hand. What was at hand was a squirrel. Cured in salt, garlic, thyme and basil for 48 hours. Browned in in a skillet with lard. Placed in a pan with enough lard to cover for three hours at 250 degrees in the oven. Pulled out and allowed to cool the squirrel was stored in a mason jar and covered with the lard. Delicious! The remaining meat will be shredded and served over a small portion of pureed split peas as an appetizer.
2. Kimchee: I created a version of kimchee with cabbage, Hungarian and Hatch peppers, ginger, garlic, green onions, fish sauce and salt. Tossing it all together it was packed into a ½ gallon mason jar where it is fermenting nicely. Should be ready in 2-4 weeks.
3. Turnip Kraut: Ten pounds of purple top turnips and greens shredded, salt added and packed into ceramic crock. Fermenting nicely and should be ready in 4-6 weeks.
4. Lard: Five pounds of leaf fat (fat from around the kidneys of a hog) rendered out into beautiful snow white lard. Perfect for baking.
5. Bread: Cindy has been busy baking outstanding bread the past few days.
6. Strawberry Mead: Four pounds of honey, water and a pint of frozen strawberries from our patch, natural yeast and the mix is fermenting quietly in the corner of my study. The mead should be ready in six months.
7. Pork Link Sausage w/figs, brandy and nutmeg: replicating a reference I found to a traditional German Christmas sausage. Four of my favorite food stuffs…how could it go wrong? Making this one later today.
……………………………………………………………………………….
Reading this weekend two early Christmas presents: The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz (ah, that explains the above) and Faviken by Magnus Nilsson, a great cookbook when you are trying to figure out what to do with your “perfectly shot and mature hazelhen” and that handful of lingonberries, or a backstrap loin of moose.