Turkey, goose and squirrel, Oh My, article
Fall of 2018, in New Hampshire there have been huge amounts of squirrels killed on the roads. Numbers supposedly due to previous mild winters. The town forums have been full of all sorts of crazy, laugh out loud, posts about squirrels.
This is the article I wrote for Nashua Telegraph, Encore Food and Fun Supplement end of October, together with my recipe for boned, stuffed turkey breast.
Saw this on line and couldn't resist it. Encore used it.
I was going to write about the differences between American Thanksgiving turkey and British Christmas turkey. But there’s been a lot of talk on local forums and with the department of Fish and Game in recent weeks about the number of squirrels everywhere, many of them dead on the highways. Some really funny, laugh out loud, quirky comments. I posted that I had a fish and game book that had recipes for preparing and cooking squirrel, but said that wouldn’t make it into the weeknight rotation!
To which, someone replied, Whew, you had me worried!
From ‘The Complete Encyclopedia for Wild Game and Fish Cleaning and Cooking.’ by Pat Billmeyer. Copyright 1983.
“All squirrels are edibles, but many are too small to make more than a bite. The gray squirrel and the fox squirrel are most commonly eaten. At any rate, the decision is yours. If it’s big enough, it will make a delicious meal”.
Apart from directions on how to prepare a squirrel, this book has recipes for fried squirrel with a comment ‘my mother’s recipe and her mother’s before her’. Some are for squirrel stew. The recipes are very similar to rabbit recipes when I cooked whole rabbit before the price escalated in grocery stores. My cousins in Ireland would shoot rabbits and we’d cook them. Rabbit in a Dijon mustard sauce is a classic French dish.
Amazingly, the book says we have definite hunting seasons for squirrel. Currently NH Fish and Game say the season is from September 1 to January 31 with a limit of 5 a day.
I thought readers would be fascinated by this menu as we have many hunters and fishermen in New Hampshire. Pat Billmeyer says in this book:
“in case anyone questions the “classiness” of eating wild game, I’d like to start this small game section off with the following menu from the April 18, 1979 (yes 1979 not 1879) meeting of the Explorers Club, which was held at the Waldorf-Astoria (epitome of class) in New York City.
Explorer’s Club 75th Annual Dinner
Exotic Hors d’Oeuvres
Antelope Mousse
Beaver Stew
Buffalo Liver Pâté
Wild Boar Hams
Buffalo Meatballs
Roast Loin of Buffalo
Buffalo Steamship Roast
Fried Catfish
Seviche of Codfish Cheeks
Mousse of Elk
Elk Meatballs
Braised Garfish
Hippotamus Meatballs
Roast Hippotamus
Quail Eggs in Shell
Civet of Chinese Rabbits
Rattlesnake Chops
Greenland Shrimp
Shark Salad
Poached Skate
Roast Shani (I couldn’t discover what this is, just references to Hindu God Shani and the planet Saturn. Wiki does show God Shani sitting on a crow, but I hardly think a crow is an exotic game meat.)
Demi Tasse of Witchitty Grub Soup. The grub is the most important insect food of the desert and has historically been a staple in the diets of Aboriginal Australians. The raw witchetty grub tastes similar to almonds, and when cooked, the skin becomes crisp like roast chicken, while the inside becomes light yellow, like a fried egg. I’d have to be pretty hungry to eat insects even though they are being presented as high protein and include flours made from insects to use in baking.
I’ve lived, worked or traveled in 28 countries so I’ve tasted a lot of very different foods - frogs, snails, eel, wild boar, venison, moose, bison, ostrich, alligator, prairie oysters, quail, shark, sea urchin and more. I did taste dolphin in Malta and regretted it when I was told what I’d unknowingly eaten.
What is strange to us is the normal food of other cultures. I used to buy game at the Hungry Buffalo in Loudon, NH. They also now have a restaurant with venison, elk, wild boar, ostrich and other game meats as well as regular burgers etc. http://www.hungrybuffalotavern.com/index.php
I actually made ostrich stroganoff on WMUR TV’s Cooks Corner years ago. Wild game is far lower in cholesterol for healthy cooking. There are wild game dinners but it seems that you have to know about them, through fire departments, churches, PTO’s, that’s how I’ve attended some in the past.
Resources
Videos of how to cook game at NH state
https://wildlife.state.nh.us/multimedia/cooking.html
Game weekend at NH state
https://wildlife.state.nh.us/barrycamp/game-weekend.html
A wild game culinary adventure weekend September each year. The website has 12 pages of recipes from this wild game culinary adventure weekend, including recipes for bear and squirrel, as well as moose meatballs in the regular cranberry jelly and chilli sauce, venison stew, venison empañadas.
Early explorers to the New World quickly acquired a taste for turkey and took birds back to Europe. By the 1500s, turkeys were being raised domestically in Italy, France and England. When the Pilgrims and other settlers arrived in America, they were already familiar with raising and eating turkey.
On a post in town. We do get flocks of wild turkey, even in our yard.
In Charles Dicken’s time, turkey was a greater luxury than goose. On Christmas morning, when Scrooge woke from his dream in Christmas Carol (published in 1843), he sent a boy to the poulterer to buy the Cratchit’s the prize turkey, ”not the little prize turkey, the big one. What! The one as big as me.”.
Compared to wild turkeys, domestic turkeys are selectively bred to grow larger in size for their meat.
These birds can grow to be giants, often topping out at 50 pounds. In contrast, wild turkeys only weigh in at a maximum of about 25 pounds.
For my wedding, my father and I boned and stuffed five 30 lb turkeys. It’s actually easier to bone and stuff a turkey than a chicken. I’ve also made the ‘turducken’ - boned turkey, stuffed with boned chicken, duck and stuffing. Fun to do once.
Instead of whole turkey for Thanksgiving or just for less people, you can stuff a boneless turkey breast and cook it the day before. Much less time and stress than whole turkey. Then, you can also cook turkey legs and thighs in slow cooker or braise in oven to melting tenderness. Chilled, the stuffed, boneless turkey slices easily and can be reheated in gravy. It’s also excellent cold with salads.
