Fair Game

In A matter of days now, certain men in practically every state of the union will be tromping out of the woods with dogs and guns, their game bags filled to the legal limit with things furred and feathered. That they will have enjoyed the hunt there is no doubt – but whether their fallen quarry will put them in ecstasy as tasty table fare is something else again. Too often does the ring-necked pheasant turn out tough as timber, the mud hen muddy, the wild duck dry as Ibsen's play of the same name.

This culinary anticlimax, which occurs year in, year out, is completely unnecessary, since just a little care and savvy is all that is required to do justice to the fine flesh found in fields and forests. By drawing and skinning your game carefully, by ripening for the proper amount of time before cooking, and by styling your cookery to the game's age, you can be sure of avoiding most of the pitfalls that may make your victory Pyrrhic as all get-out.

Let's face it: much of the game consumed nowadays is bought in gourmet butcher shops or is ordered from mail order game farms. The quality and tenderness of such game is uniformly excellent because it's raised under controlled conditions. Everything from wild boar to pheasant is now sold in cans or jars. For men who love their Hasen-pfeffer, for example, frozen rabbit all ready for the stewing pan is now widely sold at frozen food counters. The fact that game connoisseurs are quite willing (continued on page 46)Fair Game (continued from page 35) to pay $16 for a brace of pheasants from a game preserve shows something of the value they put on the uniquely luscious taste of game. But there are those purists – and some Brillo – breasted buckos – who get an added clout from bagging their own dinners, many of them guys who, except during hunting season, are unbloodthirsty, indoor types. For these, the following facts of wild life are noted.

First of all, the knowing Nimrod must never forget the simple fact that his game is shot. When lead pierces the innards of beast or bird, it can cause undigested food to spoil the adjacent flesh. Food left in the crop alongside the neck may taint the wild meat. It's important then for the gunner – gourmet to draw his quarry as soon as possible. To draw game merely means to remove the innards. If you can't do it yourself, you'll often find butchers, suppliers, hausfraus or guides in well – known game areas who will perform this scullery work for you.

If you decide to draw the birds right in the field, it isn't necessary to pluck them immediately. Merely remove enough feathers from the neck and tail end to allow a reasonable working area. With your hunting knife make a slit alongside the neck, and remove the crop and windpipe. Cut another slit from the end of the breastbone to the tail, and remove the internal organs. Don't wash the bird, merely wipe it dry.

If it's a hefty buck you've knocked down, the easiest solution, of course, is to take your kill to the butcher nearest your camp, and ask him to skin, gut and cut the venison into pieces that will fit into your range or food freezer. However, if you are bound and determined to Do It Yourself, here's how you Do It: make your incision at the top of the chest and draw it down vertically to and around the tail. Pull the flesh to the side, and remove the lungs, heart, stomach and intestines. Wipe the adjacent flesh clean with a slightly moistened rag, and keep the torso spread open for airing with small branches until the body heat has dissipated. It is best not to skin the animal at once, but to leave it in the hide until it is aged and ready for butchering, or at least until it can be aged under semi – refrigeration. If this is the case, and you do postpone skinning, you must remove the musk glands behind the leg and upper thigh of the animal, or they will spoil the meat along the entire shank. This is easily accomplished, as they are located between the skin and flesh on the hind legs of the animal, and can be pulled out with little difficulty from a vertical incision. Once the animal is ready for skinning – which certainly shouldn't be until you've returned from your trip – complete the cut you've made to remove the innards, extending it to the bottom of the chin, and remove the hide by pulling up and out. To remove the hide from the legs, cut along the inside of them, starting from just above the hoof and running to the center cut you have made in the torso. The head and hooves, of course, should be severed.

If your hunting trail isn't too far from your home, you can defer the job of drawing the game until you've returned. Often the butcher or chef in your own club kitchen, or any competent restaurant chef, will be able to take care of all cleaning operations. But in any event, as soon as the game is brought down, it should be kept as cool and well ventilated as possible. Don't throw the birds or small animals while they're still warm in an airless heap inside your game bag. Keep the birds hanging separately as long as possible. Don't toss your deer over the front fender right alongside the engine heat, particularly on a warm day, and then begin driving several hundred miles to your destination. If you do, you may find that you've crossed the line between ripe and rotten when you sit down to your roast saddle of venison.

Unlike fish, which should be transferred right from the hook to the frying pan, game must be aged before it's eaten. If it isn't hung, it will be flat – tasting, coarse and tough. In Scotland, pheasants are hung until they almost drop from the hook. In America our tolerance for the mature fragrance of aged game is more limited. Sportsmen, in years gone by, were in the habit of aging their game outdoors, hanging it for days from the branch of a tree, a tent pole, a cornice or any other presumably cool place where its individual flavor could develop. The hazards of this old practice, still followed in some sections of the country, are countless. An occasional spell of hot weather can quickly ruin a man's entire bag. Varmints and insects can attack the hanging meat. Against their depredations hunters still douse birds with ground pepper, tie mosquito netting around small game animals or hang them from extra-tall trees. Game boxes, small contraptions with screens of fine mesh wire, are helpful if you're too many miles from civilization. The best practice, however, is to age your game in the refrigerator. It takes a little longer than outdoor aging, but it's infinitely safer. If the refrigerator temperature is set from 38° to 42°, the game will mature more satisfactorily than at a 32° to 36° temperature. Naturally, a butcher's walk-in refrigerator where the game may hang in cool air circulated by a blower does a better job than a small, crowded bachelor's refrigerator. Usually upland game birds like pheasant, quail or grouse should be aged from three to six days depending on individual taste. Wild ducks should be aged two to three days. Venison should be aged from one to two weeks.

In choosing a particular recipe, it's extremely important to know the age of the game you're about to prepare. Unless you can recognize the signs of maturity, you'll be in the position of the man who invites his chums to a dinner of broiled squab and then discovers that what he's serving tastes like old soup fowl. One of the distinctive signs of age in a bird is the end of the breastbone. In a young bird, it's soft and may be twisted easily. In older birds the tip of the breastbone is quite rigid. The feet and shanks are another sign. They're pliable and smooth in a young bird but coarse and rough in older fowl. The claws of a young bird are quite sharp; as the bird grows old, the claws become blunted. The end wing feathers are pointed in a young specimen and somewhat rounded in an older bird. When judging waterfowl, note that the windpipe of the young is soft; as they mature, it becomes less pliable. In estimating the age of a rabbit, the ears and lips are your clues; the ears of the young are very soft, and the cleft in the upper lip is more definitely outlined than in an older hare. The age of deer, of course, is indicated by the antlers; one spike for a year-old deer, two for a two-year-old, and so on.

Once you've determined that your game is young, you can choose the dry forms of cookery which are normally used in preparing tender meat, such as broiling or roasting. If game is old, it must always be cooked by moist heat as in braising, stewing or boiling (although the latter is rarely used in game cookery). Certain young game animals like rabbit or woodchuck may be cooked by either method. The tender cuts of venison like the rack or loin may be broiled or roasted, while the tough cuts like the chuck should be stewed.

Game birds tend to be dry and lean in their natural state. To compensate for this dryness, most birds which are roasted are usually covered with a thin layer of salt pork, larding pork or bacon. Aluminum foil or a double thickness of cheesecloth dipped in salad oil may be used to prevent excessive drying when a fierce oven heat is used. During cooking, the birds may be brushed with butter or oil. Basting with stock or chicken broth is an aid in retaining natural juices. The electric rotisserie in which the bird is self – basted as it revolves before the heat is an excellent piece of equipment for the modern game cook.

Your first taste of game may be quite (continued on page 77) Fair Game (continued from page 46) startling. The texture is unique, for one thing. Most game doesn't break under a fork unless it's cooked to death. And the flavor of game is pungent and racy rather than mild. It nips the taste buds, and is generally more tart than mellow. That's what is meant by "gamy," and once you've grown accustomed to its special blandishments, you may very well join the ranks of those who declare game the most exciting fare there is.

Here now from Playboy's own plushlined pup tent are easy directions for the open season ahead.

Roast pheasant with bread sauce

(Six portions)

2 pheasants, 2 1/2 to 3 lbs. each

4 thin slices salt pork

Salt, pepper

1 1/2 cup chicken broth

1 cup milk

1 medium-size onion

2 whole cloves

1 1/4 cups bread crumbs

2 tablespoons dry sherry

1/4 cup butter

2 tablespoons minced parsley

2 tablespoons minced chives

1/4 lemon

Preheat oven at 450°. Wipe pheasants with damp cloth. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Tie slices of salt pork over breasts of pheasants. Place pheasants, breast side up, in a shallow roasting pan. Roast 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°. Add chicken broth to pan. Continue roasting pheasants, basting about every 10 minutes with chicken broth. Roast until pheasants are tender – about one to 1 1/4 hours total cooking time. While pheasants are roasting, pour milk into a thick saucepan. Stick the cloves into the onion. Add the onion to the saucepan. Bring slowly up to the boiling point but do not boil. Add 1/2 cup bread crumbs to the milk. Stir well. Simmer about 10 minutes longer, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Remove onion and cloves from saucepan. Add sherry to sauce. When pheasants are done pour off fat from the roasting pan, or remove fat with a basting syringe, but save drippings. Add drippings to bread sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. In another saucepan melt the butter. Add the remaining cup bread crumbs. Saute slowly, stirring constantly, until bread crumbs are light brown. Add parsley and chives to pan. Squeeze the juice of 1/4 lemon into the bread crumbs. Mix well. Serve the bread crumbs and the bread sauce in separate sauceboats at the table. Cut pheasant into portions with poultry shears. Serve pheasant with any tart jelly, such as red or black currant, cranberry or crabapple.

Roast dressed pheasant

This way of presenting pheasants on the platter is strictly for display purposes, but if you have the time and the patience, it's a lot of fun for a buffet or holiday table. Before the pheasant is plucked, cut off in whole sections the plumage of the wings and tail. Cut the wings close to the body. Cut of the tail with enough of the appendage to keep the feathers intact. Also cut off the head and neck in one piece. For each section take a length of rather stiff wire and force it through the solid part of each appendage to which the feathers are attached. Allow about two inches of wire to extend from the end for fastening each section later on. Roast the pheasants as described in the previous recipe. For dressing two pheasants, take two small loaves of unsliced white bread or one large loaf cut in half crosswise. Hollow out the center of each loaf so that it resembles a trough, into which the cooked pheasant may be placed. Fry the bread in a large pan with deep fat heated to 370° or in a shallow pan containing one inch of hot fat, turning the bread as needed to brown evenly. Place the roasted pheasants on the bread on a large silver platter. Arrange the head, wings and tailpiece of each pheasant, fastening each section into the bread, so that the birds look as though they were reconstituted to their natural state. If you buy pheasants for this purpose, be sure to ask for male pheasants in the plume, since the male wears the more colorful feathers.

Roast quail with grazes

(Four portions)

4 quail

2 thin slices salt pork

1 sliced onion

1 sliced piece celery

2 sprigs parsley

Salt, pepper

1 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup tomato juice

Brown gravy coloring

2 crushed juniper berries

1 tablespoon arrowroot or 2 tablespoons flour

1 oz. cognac

8-oz. can seedless grapes

Preheat oven at 500°. Sprinkle quail lightly with salt and pepper. Cut slices of salt pork in half crosswise. Tie a piece of salt pork over the breast of each quail. Place the quail breast side up in a shallow roasting pan. Add the onion, celery and parsley to the pan. Roast quail 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°. Add 1/2 cup chicken broth to the pan. Roast about 15 to 20 minutes longer or until quail is tender, basting about every five minutes. Remove quail from pan. Remove salt pork from quail. Skim fat from drippings in pan. Place the roasting pan (continued on page 81) Fair game(continued from page 77) over a top flame. Add balance of chicken broth, tomato juice, juniper berries and enough gravy coloring to make liquid a rich brown. Bring to a boil. Dissolve arrowroot or flour in 1/4 cup cold water, mixing until no lumps remain. Slowly add arrowroot solution to the gravy while stirring constantly. Simmer 10 minutes over a low flame. Strain gravy into a saucepan. Drain grapes. Add grapes to gravy. Bring to a boil. Add cognac. Add salt and pepper to taste. Place each quail on a piece of toast. Pour sauce with grapes over quail on serving plates or platter.

Breast of mallard duck

(Four portions)

Many ducks on the Eastern flyway live on a diet of seafood which creates a particularly strong fishy smell when the ducks are roasted or broiled. The odor which comes from the carcass isn't much of a problem in the recipe below, because the breast meat is cut off of the carcass. The remainder of the duck, consisting of the leg and second joint, are seldom eaten, since they're generally quite tough. Sometimes the discarded meat is put into a duck press where the juices are extracted for the gravy. In roasting or broiling wild ducks, the meat should always be cooked rare for best flavor and tenderness.

2 mallard ducks

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 teaspoon rosemary

4 sprigs parsley

1 onion sliced

2 pieces celery sliced

1 crushed clove garlic Salt, pepper, paprika

Pluck the feathers from the duck, removing only those which cover the breast. With a very sharp knife, cut into the skin – not the flesh – starting at the neck and cutting straight back along the top of the breastbone to the tail. Remove the skin from the breast. To remove the meat, cut along each side of the breastbone. Run the knife under the flesh and as close as possible to the carcass. Remove each side of the breast in one piece. Place the breasts in a bowl with all other ingredients except salt, pepper and paprika. Marinate overnight. Preheat the broiler at 550°. Remove the breasts from the marinade. Sprinkle each breast lightly with salt, pepper and paprika. Broil under the broiler flame about five minutes on each side. Serve with wild rice, creamed silver onions, fresh green peas and guava jelly.

Roast pressed duck

(Four portions)

2 wild ducks, cleaned, drawn and singed

Salad oil

Salt, pepper

Dash cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons sweet butter

1 teaspoons minced shallot or onion

2/3 cup red burgundy

2 tablespoons currant jelly

1/2 teaspoon beef extract

Half lemon

1 oz. cognac

Be sure oil sac is removed from each duck near the tail end. Preheat oven at 550°. Place the ducks in a shallow roasting pan. Brush ducks generously with salad oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast 15 to 20 minutes, no longer. Slice breast meat from ducks and keep it in a deep, warmed platter. Save all juices when carving. In a chafing dish over a direct flame melt the butter. Add the shallot. Saute about one minute. Add the burgundy, currant jelly, beef extract and juice of half lemon. Simmer three to five minutes. Place the carcasses of the ducks in the well of the duck press. Squeeze the juice several times and pour it into the chafing dish. Add juice from platter. Add cognac and dash of cayenne pepper. Season to taste. Pour hot sauce over sliced breast of duck. Serve with fried hominy, grilled tomatoes and a tossed garlic-flavored green salad.

Venison Chops, Chestnuts Espagnole

(Four portions)

4 venison chops, 3/4 in. thick

1/2 cup French dressing

Prepared mustard

Salt, pepper

12-oz. can imported whole chestnuts

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup celery, small dice

1/4 cup onion, small dice

1/4 cup green pepper, small dice

8-oz. can tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Marinate the venison chops in the French dressing for two hours. In a large saucepan melt the butter. Add the celery, onion and green pepper. Saute only until onion turns yellow. The celery and green pepper may be crisp. Chop the tomatoes coarsely, saving the juice. Add tomatoes and their juice to the saucepan. Simmer slowly five minutes. Drain the chestnuts and add to the pan. Add the sugar and garlic powder. Season generously with salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes. Remove venison chops from French dressing. Brush each chop lightly with mustard. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Broil under a preheated broiler flame about five to six minutes on each side. Serve chestnuts alongside chops on serving plates. Garnish each plate with a large sprig of watercress and prepare for an evening of fun and game.