ok.... so for those of you that don't know... and I take much of the responsibility for this since I have not written a blog post in months.... I am working as the Executive Chef at The Elk Creek Ranch in Meeker, Colorado.
Where in the Hell is THAT you ask? Let's just say it is g-d's country out here.... a playground for the
uber-rich who like to not only enjoy the best flyfishing in the world, but also some of the best hunting that exists.
It is interesting to me, though, how easy it is to laugh at the fact that here I am, in a place that is owned and visited by the likes of the Waltons of Wal-Mart, Jack Nicklaus the Guru of Golf, and other heads of industry.... (like the guy who invented the anti-caking compound that is in every bag of shredded cheese and grout that every person who eats cheese or remodels homes would use....) and they want nothing more than to get dressed up in camouflage, paint their faces, hide in the woods at 4 in the morning, and shoot things....
I suppose the advantage I have is that I get to cook some of these animals that they shoot, whether I like it or not.... and it is a great learning experience for me.... as in I have learned that Elk that has just been killed is gross and tough since the meat has not had a chance to break down yet, and grouse (a type of pigeon) is NOTHING like duck and needs tenderizing, in the form of pounding and soaking in buttermilk, to make it palatable.
But nothing compares to cooking an Antelope tenderloin not a degree past rare for one avid hunter who videotapes his kills... After I watched the video, I then had to go cook the very animal I had just seen struck by an arrow.... and cook it barely past the stage it had been in before it was killed...
I made a plum gastrique to accompany it. It was the same colour as the meat...
Very very dead. I mean RED.
I am not a huge fan of game meats other than Lamb or Duck, as I am Jewish and growing up we only ate Lamb Chops because, and I swear this is true, my mother would only allow us to eat one form of pork, bacon, as all other forms of pork she believed were the reason we had financial difficulties in life (I am not joking). But there is something so sanguine about the taste of game meats that does not resonate well with me.
Game meats, according to the USDA cannot be sold unless farm raised, which is oxymoronic since the term "Game" refers to the fact that it is a wild, non-domesticated, animal. So, in my place of work, I can only serve the kills to the guests who killed it. And, they don't feel badly, so why should I?
Truth be told....i am waiting for rifle season to get into full swing.... then I will learn the art of cooking food the way it was meant to be... killed and eaten.... FARM to TABLE in its true sense!
2 comments:
I'd say 95% of all people here in the US is far removed from the fish, chicken, and pork, and beef that they consume. We go to the grocery stores or restaurants and everything is neatly packaged and sterilized. We don't have to think where we get our food from.
While I try not to make it a habit of eating meat in general, I do have some respect for people that hunt and eat meat respectfully out of necessity. There's necessity, and there's also gaming for sport which I don't agree with. If I could arm an elk with an AK-47 and teach it to shoot hunters, skin them, and then eat them, then that would be my definition of a true, fun, and balanced game.
I also think it's important that people that do consume meat should be involved at least once in their lives in the whole process. I think schools should have a mandatory trip where they take school children to a cattle processing facility and ask them to participate from start to finish. Half of my family grew up on a farm, so it's not a completely foreign experience to me.
Preaching aside, I have an uncle who's an avid hunter (and happens to be a mortician - go figure.) I really do enjoy his deer jerky and sausages every Christmas season. It's really a big process to get it from woods and on to the dinner table. Once he's done cleaning, he ships his meat off to another person that he pays to process the jerky and sausages because of the amount of work involved. It deer almost always sits for an extended period of time in order to cure otherwise it does come off as gamey.
My mother also had fresh ducks once that you couldn't even eat because it tasted "too fresh." Maybe it was the fact that it came from the Genesee River with Kodak spewing chemicals around the corner. But she cleaned them in the back yard, and it stunk the whole entire neighborhood to high heaven.
About the only really fresh game that I've tasted that was extremely good right out of the skillet is fish and chicken. Beyond that, I have to give you credit if you can make something very tasteful out of something that fresh for discerning clients.
Great post
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