Wild Bites #65: a 6-minute read that makes you smarter about wild food and tells you what's to come on the website,
YouTube, or To The Bone. ~ Hank Barley risotto is comfort in a bowl. Here's what's trending on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: - It's still soup weather in many places, but maybe go for a lighter soup, like my Mexican fish soup. This is a Baja recipe, one that works with all sorts of fish and seafood.
- If you're not afraid of squidgy seafood, my recipe for Spanish pulpo alla gallega is absolutely my favorite octopus dish. Give it a shot! Good with clams, squid or lobster, too.
- Sweet, my recipe for Greek rabbit
stew is trending! Kouneli stifado is a hearty, filling stew traditionally made with rabbit, but chicken or any other white meat works, too.
- For those of you who are already mushroom hunting, my mushroom
pierogi is great with morels, oyster mushrooms and pheasant backs, common springtime shrooms. Too cold still? This works with dried mushrooms, too.
- If there's a thiing I like more than meatballs, it's deviled eggs. And my crab deviled eggs are baller! So, so good. Bet you can't eat just 12... ;-)
- Barley risotto is a homey, simple dish that you can take in many directions. Meat or
no, dark broth or light, mushrooms or no, all up to you. It's comfort in a bowl.
- Finally, if you have venison and greens, this Ghanaian recipe for palaver sauce really hits the spot. Rich,
spicy-but-not-hot, full of greens, it's a great dish.
Moving up the list: If you still have giblets or deer offal in the freezer, make some Cajun dirty rice! No? Get some chicken livers
and use up whatever you feel like from your freezer. I guarantee you this recipe will make you a giblet lover! Love these or any of my recipes? Please rate them while you're there so people searching for recipes know they're worth clicking on! Who doesn't like some Texas hot links sausage? Spring is a great time to do some freezer work, cleaning it out and making sausages for the summer grilling season. I have so many sausage recipes on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, it's hard to pick just a few. But I'll focus on recipes that work with frozen meat -- meaning you either poach them or smoke them before refreezing; this helps a lot with moisture loss, so
refreezing doesn't hurt them. You can browse here for all my sausage recipes, and I have a bunch of recipes for dry-cured sausages like salami, too. - Let's start with some classic Texas hot links, the sausage you'd get at a Texas barbecue. Smoky, spicy, but not crazy -- unless you want it that way -- these are my second-favorite barbecue link.
- Wisconsin red
brats are my favorite. I mean, I am a UW-Madison graduate, after all. Smoked beef or venison brats with pork fat, these need to be at every cookout in the Midwest. It's a law...
- Switching it up, a German weisswurst is a great, light sausage. You poach these before serving or storing, Traditionally this is a breakfast sausage, but I like them with mustard and pretzels.
- Cajun andouille
sausage is a must-have if you are ever going to make things like gumbo or jambalaya. They're great just eaten with eggs, too.
- Not to be outdone, Portuguese linguica sausage makes a superior sandwich, but it too is also served with eggs as breakfast in both California's Central Valley and in New England.
- Polish kielbasa is probably the sausage I ate most growing up, in all kinds of ways, from
breakfast to sandwiches to stews and as a side.
- German bockwurst are a fantastic way to use lots of random meats. I love them with snow goose or venison, plus pork. Like the weisswurst, you poach these before serving or
storing.
April is when most of us start to fish, and it's a great month for it. Deepwater rockfish in California, trout starting up all over, sheepshead and grouper and pompano in the Gulf, catfish are waking up, blackfish and stripers and winter flounder on the Atlantic coast, croakers starting to croak, whiting on the Texas coast... it's a great time to wet a
line! Here are some fun springtime fish recipes for your catch: - Let's start with a pair of trout recipes that scream spring: Pan-fried trout with spring peas, and the classic, trout with morel mushrooms. Morels are in season in most of the East now, creeping up toward Minnesota!
- This recipe is really for the sauce, a vivid saffron sauce that pairs well with any fish or shrimp, even crab. Serve this with greens, and you have springtime on a plate.
- Simple seared fish with asparagus is a gorgeous weeknight dish you can sex up for date night if you want. Like the saffron sauce, this recipe works with most fish.
- Another versatile fish recipe for springtime is my fish risotto, which is light, delicate, but still hearty enough for a weeknight meal.
- Looking for a light soup for a cool spring evening? I love my recipe for salmon miso soup, which works great with trout, mackerel, jacks, yellowtail, even catfish and perch.
Aftermath of a very bad day for this cow... Here's the story of my adventure in Coahuila, Mexico, where I took a chance, had an adventure, learned a lot, and had fun, to boot. This is really a story about taking a step, doing the thing, and crossing the river -- whether that river is literal or metaphorical. If you're not familiar, Coahuila is a part of Mexico that has seen horrific violence in recent years, so
Cancun it ain't... read on for the details. I wrote about this over at To the Bone, which is where I have shifted much of my energies lately. Why? For
now, it's pure. The algorithms on Facebook, Pinterest, Google and even Instagram have all throttled the reach of independent creators like me. Substack works differently. You subscribe -- free, or, if you can support my work, paid -- and so everyone who sees my stuff there actually wants to. It feels like 2008 all over again, and that's been refreshing. If even half you who
read Wild Bites went over to Substack to subscribe, To the Bone would become one of the biggest Substacks out there. There are lots of benefits special to paid subscribers, and I am planning more as time goes on. But even if you're just thinking about subscribing, free or paid, pop over there and take a look. Then message me with what you'd like to see more of in dterms of types of posts: recipes, essays, travel stories, how-tos, etc. Thanks in advance! 5. Borderlands Pre-Orders Live!!!So excited! Following this link takes you to my shop on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Cover price is $35, but I have decided to sell it to you for $30 as a gesture of thanks for your support. Buying from me directly is by far the best way you can help me out now. Borderlands will be available on Amazon, but Jeff Bezos takes a gigantic cut of the money for the privilege of being on that
site. We have a final size -- 304 pages -- and it's now looking like the book will ship in early June. I am very proud to say that once again, this book is 100 percent American made! Most cookbooks are printed in China (boo), but mine are all printed in Illinois, and warehoused in
Michigan. As a resident of Minnesota and a Badger alum, it's a Big Ten thing... The book tour is forming, and things are accelerating. Right now, the tour will start at Fulton Brewing on June 19. So save that date to get a book and a special beer, and maybe a Borderlands-inspired food special or three. Then, on June 30, we'll have a proper book dinner over at Chilango in Minneapolis. This one will have a "greatest hits" of border favorites. My swing through Northern California is set, too. Head over to my Book Tour Page to get the details. Stay tuned for more events! Well, hell. I sure thought we'd have the first foraging reports here in Minnesota by now, but a week's worth of sleet and overnight snow has slowed everything to a crawl. Sigh. I'm over it. I can handle March snow, but April? Gah. My friends who have lived here, and in the nearby Dakotas, all tell me to get used to it. Boo. I
resist. At least I am headed to warmer places. I will be in northern Texas with the folks at Harvesting
Nature this coming week to cook for a wild pig hunt. I am hoping to get one of my own, and do some new sausage recipes! Any requests? Always looking for new ideas... Comments?Let us know what you think about Wild Bites by using our anonymous comment form - we love to hear from you, and we read every single comment. If you have a question, fire away and be sure to share your email address so we can respond. |
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