Stir Fly

I taught an Asian Cooking class last night at Onamia High School on the behest of Onamia Community Education.

For starters I did a "mother sauce" for stir fry with chicken broth and plenty of garlic and ginger - thickened w/ cornstarch and water. It works for chow mein, too. It is called a mother sauce because it is adaptable to many different dishes - add crushed red pepper( and catsup!), and or Thai chili sauce to get a spicy Thai stir fry, more garlic to do garlic chicken and broccoli, fish or oyster sauce for others and so on.

We did a curry, too, w/ heavy cream and carmelized onions and chicken( and curry powder, of course), lime juice and cilantro that was excellent. A guest at the class said she made a similar curry utilizing grouse and coconut milk and it was great. Good idea. Pheasant would be exceptional.

In the past as an appetizer I have sautee'd bite sized pheasant portions and glazed/finished them off w/ a sweet hot Thai chili sauce. It is like eating candy it is so good.

Missed Again!

You can't eat a deer if you don't get him.

Thirty years ago or more I was sneaking and peeking for deer in a soft late season snow; heavy, wet flakes the size of miniature poodles adhered to every branch of the alders, dogwoods, and conifers. Visibility was about 10 feet.

It was a fairytail land of silence. I was approaching a stand of balsam and as I stepped into a bouquet of small ones a tree exploded with white. It was a doe busting loose just 10 feet from me, maybe 8. It was too close to shoulder my rifle( 30-30 lever action Winchester), so I negotiated a quick hip shot and in the blink of an eye the deer was past me and gone, though not before I fenced forward with the rifle barrel and stabbed her in the ribs w/ the muzzle.

I had been unable to lever out my spent shell because the rifle was down at hip level so I could not shoot my 2nd shot. All that remained was a few deer hairs stuck to the end of the barrel.

A short time later, after I had crossed the 40 acre field to the farmhouse, Clifford looked at me sideways as I told him the story.

It wasn't the only time over the years that I have missed a deer. When you miss one, you don't have one to eat. The photo is of a roast of another deer in another year.

Late Season Shore Lunch

I am going to keep writing about venison but today will be an interlude because yesterday while on the patio I saw sunnies and bass( largemouth) in the shallows.

There is only one reason that fish would be in the shallows this time of the year. They were feeding. Fishing it was, then, and we caught 4 northerns and 4 bass in 1 hr and had a great late season shore lunch for supper. Traditional in the sense of fried potatoes and baked beans, but we also had corn fritters with chives and jalapenos.

I floured and panfried the fish and finished it off with white wine, tarragon, parsley and butter.Exceptional.

Back to venison tomorrow.

Waxing and Waning

I did a venison roast recipe for Outdoor News which should be in this wk's issue. It involved a marinade w/ nearly equal amts of soy sauce and red wine and even more oil, plus the usual suspects of garlic and bay leaf and pepper and w/ the surprising addition( to me) of lemon juice. A 24 hr marinade.

I think the wine and lemon juice function as tenderizers. I found the recipe in the old farmhouse cupboard of my Great Aunt Sophia. She was a great cook. I got it shortly before dementia encouraged the removal of Clifford, her son and a mentor of mine, from his birthplace and lifelong home in Gowan near Floodwood.

A lifetime of fishing and hunting memories remain. Food too. Clifford had an easygoing facility in the kitchen and the smokehouse. He made the best venison I ever ate. His traditional first meals of the fresh shot deer were a neck roast and the ribs, which many of us discard as inedible because of the many inseparable layers of meat and tallow. He would chase the waxy ribs w/ real hot coffee to dissolve the wax and make it palatable. It works.

Ivan and Mule Deer

My daughter rides horse at Rolling Hills Arabians on the west side of Mille Lacs. Ruth does the horses. Ivan is the fishing guide( Ivan's Guide Service). He's quite a Ivan - if you fish w/ Ivan, you know that you've fished w/ Ivan. And you would have caught fish( walleyes) even in this tough season on Mille Lacs.

He just got back from Colorado and he fried up a snack of fresh ground mule deer seasoned simply w/ a seasoning salt. Excellent. Not a bit of wild taste.

We each got a bowl and sat at the table and ate the meat as we visited while the girls were riding horse. A beautiful late summer's eve.

If They Are So Smart, Why Were They So Dumb

I think more than a few have lost their appetite on Wall Street recently. Talk about choking on a donut.
Credit default swaps. You now own them( as a taxpayer), thanks to AIG. Do you know what they are?
If they were food on a plate you wouldn't eat them.

Bear Too

Why will a lot of rural America be voting for McCain/Palin? Moose stew.
Twice this wk while at work( bar and restaurant), I got to see a dead bear in a pickup truck, one shot by a 13 yr old boy, his first; the other by a 74 yr old guy, his 13th.

Rural America does this( hunts) and you don't have to punch out on a timeclock to check out a local trophy out front. We honor braggin rights. I know both people. That's rural America, which is probably half the country.

Bear stew, too. Could you see Biden eating bear stew?or Obama?