We've got ducks!

An interesting thing happened on the way to dinner the other night. What began as a simple plan to enjoy a duck dinner has instead become our first foray into the world of urban farming with animals. 

Our friend, chef Christine Mittnacht, told me some weeks ago that she was going to be butchering several of her ducks. I asked her if I could get one from her, but that she could just give me the live animal and I would take care of the killing and cleaning myself in order to save a few dollars. As a hunter I have of course cleaned a great many critters, and dealing with one duck is quick work.

Not this time...

Cheyenne petitions the warden for the duck's stay of execution.

I made the stupid but predictable mistake of letting my daughters see and hold the duck when I came home with it. Suddenly he had three allies (Kim had immediately joined the two girls in his defense) who were adamant in their protests and pleas to spare his life. It didn't help that the duck also had a little water in one eye as Cheyenne was holding him. Jesse blurted out, "Daddy, look! He's crying!" 

Jesse made urgent promises to be a responsible duck owner.

I really hadn't expected such a passionate response from them. These were, after all, my daughters who used to hunt with me when they were little. They knew what meat acquisition was all about. But I did find their attachment to and defense of the duck rather endearing, and I thought it would be cool if they did want to take on the responsibility of caring for him. So I relented and had them make all of the promises that parents make their kids promise when they beg for a new pet. 

An old machine parts barrel serves as a hutch.

I threw a couple pictures of the girls holding the duck up on facebook, got justifiably laughed at for my lack of spine, subsequently acquired two additional hens from Christine (who messaged me with what I felt was an extra long "hahahahahaaaaaaa") and spent the next two days building a run in the backyard for the trio to live in.

In their new home.

We had planned on getting chickens and/or ducks at some point anyway. It was on the agenda. It just came a little earlier and in a manner slightly askew from the original plan. The ladies have named their fowl: Cheyenne's is the drake, she calls him Cornelius; Jesse calls her brown and white hen Chloe; and after some consternation Kim has settled on Lucky for her black hen. Christine said they are a mixed breed, "barnyard mutts...part pekin, part khaki campbell." Barnyard mutts, I like that.

First egg, I think from Lucky. 4/10/12

Yesterday we received our first egg. A very exciting discovery it was. I still have a bit of work to do on the run and coop (like installing a door), and the ducks are still a bit skittish in their new surroundings. But I'm having fun with them and so is everyone else. Their muted quacking and clucking is almost meditative, their conversations with one another are lively and physically expressive, with a good deal of head bobbing and mutual beak rubbing, and their excitement each time a full pail of clean water is set in the run is entertaining, to say the least.

Cheyenne saying good morning to the trio.

David's tip for the day: Unless you're ready and willing to become a "duck farmer" don't let your daughters hold, pet or name any duck you have intended for the table.

As I was finishing this blog entry this morning we got another egg, this time from Jesse's girl Chloe. 

The beautiful, invasive, edible daylily

I almost can't believe it's been 10 days since I updated this site. So much has gone on in the last week or two that the time has seemed to just flash by. I think I'll be adding updates daily for the next several days, just to cover everything that's been going on.

But today's entry has to do with this morning's breakfast. Yesterday I stopped by my Mom's house after a little foraging hike into a new area (found another ramp trove, young nettles and garlic mustard, as well as a number of young may apples just lifting themselves up from the earth). My Dad is in Alabama for a couple weeks, visiting his brother and doing some fishing, so I stopped by the house to see if Mom needed anything and to check the rhubarb she said was coming up in the back yard. 

Image of daylily flower from onlyfoods.net, where there is also some nutritional information listed on daylilies. 

As we walked around the perimeter of the yard I was amazed to see how over-run part of it was with daylilies (hemerocallis fulva), or tiger lilies as we've always called them. Shoots from three to ten inches high covered one whole section of the yard next to the house and were dozens more were creeping around the corner and into the ground around a tree. Mom complained that they were pushing into areas where she didn't want them. No problemo, says I, as I grabbed a garden fork and immediately dug up a half dozen or so.

Daylilies showing young shoots/stalks and the root system with small tubers.

I washed the roots off and placed them in a large bowl of water overnight to further loosen any remaining dirt. Daylilies are edible but not all lilies are daylilies. Some can make you very sick indeed. The common daylily or tiger lily is easy to identify, particularly when it is in full flower. The young, flowerless shoots have sword-like leaves and when cut at ground level the stalk resembles a leek in its multiple ringed layers. The real tell-tale sign is in the root. Rather than growing from a single bulb cluster like an Easter lily, daylily roots are a medusa-like tangle of tendrils and little tubers that look like small fingerling potatoes.

Daylily tubers soaking in cold water to clean.

Every part of the daylily is edible, to one degree or another. The best parts, in my opinion, are the unopened flower buds, followed by the flowers themselves, which can be used like you might a squash blossom. Unfortunately, it's still too early here for the buds and flowers to appear. But the stalks and root tubers are available now. 

Cleaned and trimmed stalks and tubers; bottom image shows the interior of the small tubers.

When preparing them I take the shoots and cut the stalks off where they meet the root system. Wash the stalks under running water and trim the side leaves and upper, looser leaves, leaving a fairly tight single stalk. The smallest ones I will toss in a salad or stir fry whole. The larger ones I slice perpendicularly like you might with a leek, and use those pieces the same way, in a salad or stir fry. The stalks are fairly bland, tasting to me like a cross between romaine lettuce and a very mild radish. But they can add some color, nutrition and variety to any number of dishes.

The root tubers require more cleaning but are interesting and kind of fun to work with. Maybe it's because they look like baby baby potatoes...the cuteness factor, I suppose. Separate the little tubers from the tendrils and stems, and wash thoroughly. I wash them in a large bowl, agitating and rubbing handfuls of them together through a few changes of water. The interior of the tubers is whitish and the meat has the texture of a common radish. They're rather mild. When eaten raw they also exhibit an interesting flavor that is slightly sweet but with a mild radish-like, peppery after-taste. Apparently there is a small percentage of the population who may find daylilies disagreeable to their systems. I think I may be on the edge of that group of people, as I find that whenever I eat them raw in anything more than a very small quantity I suffer a little nausea. It's not too dissimilar to the feeling I get when I eat a lot of raw onions or radishes; a kind of gut-achy, nauseous feeling comes over me (but I still eat onions and radishes because I just like them too darn much!). However, cooking seems to nullify whatever substance is in them that causes the discomfort when they are eaten raw.

Breakfast of eggs with ramp pesto and a daylily hash.

This morning I browned some butter with diced garlic and ramps, added several slices of pancetta and threw in a handful of daylily tubers (slicing the larger ones in half) along with a pinch of salt. As they were finshing I added a few sliced stalks to the mix and let it saute for another minute or two. Scooped them from the pan and quickly fried a couple of eggs over-easy, spooned a little ramp pesto over the tops, and that was breakfast. I might add that the tubers smell, to me, a little like peanuts while frying. I wonder if anyone else has that impression as well.

Daylily tubers & stalks, pancetta, garlic and ramps sauteed in hand rolled butter.

Daylilies, a common decorative yard flower; also good to eat. I'll let you know when the flower buds and flowers are table ready!

Ramp pesto

My Dad phoned me yesterday while he was out on one of his local exploring mini-expeditions. "I found a place covered with wild onions. They're all over." "Already?" I replied. "It's little early yet." I have my spots that I start checking around this time of year and thus far no ramps have made an appearance. 

"Where are you?" I asked. He told me and I said, "Well, why don't you come get me and we'll have a look?" He was a bit further inland than where I begin looking for the dagger-shaped leaves around this time of year, enough so that the cool Lake Michigan temperatures weren't a factor in slowing spring growth like they are closer to the lake. 

I retrieved a couple of bags, my old digging knife and a camera and waited for my Dad to show up. Upon arriving at the place he had found I had to admit that he had indeed come upon a good location for spring ramps ("wild onions" to Dad). Although they were still relatively small in size they were growing thickly, with little bunches more or less uniformly covering a pretty large expanse of ground. 

Young ramps bursting through the earth in early spring.

I was excited and harvested just a couple of handfuls-worth, while planning to return to the spot in another week or two.

Just-harvested ramps. It's not cool to harvest too much. Be frugal and leave more than you take.

Ramps, also known as wild leeks or wild onions, are one of the first wild edibles a lot of folks learn to identify and harvest. That may be because they are also one of the first edibles to make an appearance each spring. They are hard to mistake for anything else once you've harvested them yourself. They also seem to have become much more popular (trendy might be a better word) with chefs in recent years, and you'll find them on menus in a number of noteworthy restaurants.

Ramps have an intense flavor that's something of a marriage of green onion and garlic, and you can use them just about any way you might use either or both of those vegetable herbs. When the morels begin to appear a plate of grilled morel mushrooms and ramps, washed down with a nice ale, is practically tradition.

Ramps after cleaning, beautiful and colorful.

This morning I decided to make a pesto from the bunch I dug up yesterday. I'll share the recipe here, but bear in mind that the ingredient amounts are entirely arbitrary. Pesto is one of those things that can be made any number of ways with any number of ingredients and any number of mutable measurements.  

Ramp & Arugula Pesto

Ingredients:

• Ramps, one large handful
• Arugula, 3/4 cup
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 1/2+ cup
• Almonds, 1/2 cup, toasted
• Parmesan or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, 1 cup, shaved
• Pinch of salt
• Freshly ground pepper, just a couple turns of the pepper mill

Ramp pesto ingredients, romaine and baby spinach I added later not shown.

1. Toast the almonds in an oven at 400° for around 10 minutes. They smell oh-so-good! Roughly chop them up and pour into your food processor. Give it a few pulses to chop them even more.

2. Roughly chop the ramps, leaves and all. Add the chopped ramps, arugula, oil, cheese, salt and pepper to the processor. Pulse it until everything is well blended. You may want to add more oil until it gets to a consistency you like.

Ramp & arugula pesto, ready to rock your taste buds.

That's pretty well it. Easy-peasy. But now here is where the adaptable nature of pesto comes in handy. I found that my initial recipe was far too pungent. I knew that Kim would find it too spicy and "hot" for her taste. So I grabbed a handful of baby spinach and three big leaves of romaine lettuce, tossed them into the processor and pulsed it to blend everything together. Perfect! The spinach and romaine mellowed it out quite nicely. The finished pesto looked fantastic, a beautiful vibrant green, and it had a spicy freshness that made spring seem even more spring-y.

Eager to use the ramp pesto right away, I whipped up a huge omelet with a row of canned diced tomatoes and a strip of the pesto spooned over them before folding the omelet over on itself. I cut the fat egg pie in half and plated one half for Kim and the other for me. It was incredible. I am not making this up--go ahead and ask her--Kim actually licked her plate clean. That's how good it was.

The pesto will stay fresh in your fridge for a month or so, if it lasts that long before you eat it all!

After we finished breakfast I jarred the remaining pesto into an empty gelato container and thought, "I would totally buy this if it was on a store shelf. Someone should make this stuff to sell." Someone like me! (Let me know if you would like a jar.)

Maple Syrup

This month I had the pleasure to learn the craft of making maple syrup with Jack Kretsch of Kretsch Family Maple Syrup. Jack and his wife Bonnie live outside of Manitowoc, near Whitelaw, where they have a hundred or so sugar maple tap lines running each year at the close of winter. I knew the high quality of Kretsch maple syrup because we used it for our Sunday morning breakfasts at Stumpjack, in our special french toast (I must remember to share that recipe here) and our baked oatmeal. Kretsch Maple Syrup a relatively small operation and their syrup is something special; it's sweet but not cloyingly so, it is lighter in color, golden brown rather than the dark, caramelized brown you see in many syrups. It's a natural and pure artisan syrup with a flavor that is entirely unadulterated.

Tap lines one a large maple tree. On one of the days we collected sap we harvested 277 gallons.

I told Jack's daughter Heather last year that if they desired any help with the maple syrup production I would be eager to join in, so that I might learn some of their secrets for producing the delicious elixir (yes, I've enjoyed it right from the glass, straight up, no chaser). Heather contacted me and said that her dad could, in fact, use a little help with this season's harvest and production. I was excited to be of assistance wherever I could. Unfortunately, I didn't get to help nearly as much as I had hoped, because the season was cut short by the uncharacteristic warm weather we've had this year. I was hoping to participate all the way through April but this year's season lasted just three weeks. Jack confirmed that last weekend was pretty well the end of it. The nights were not getting cold enough to produce the kind of sap flow they needed.

Wood burning stove that cooks the sap and steel pail collected cooked syrup through a filter.

But I did get three or four days in where I got to lend a hand collecting sap and hanging out with Jack in his sugar shack while he processed the sap into syrup. I wasn't able to be there when he did the final filtering and bottling, which bummed me out a bit because I wanted to get photos of every step during the process. Next year.

.

Jack Kretsch shrouded in steam inside his sugar shack as he cooks maple sap into maple syrup.

I took a lot of photos and a little bit of video, and I learned a lot and had a great time getting to know Jack. (I may have to profile him in a future article; the man does a heckuva lot of interesting things and is quite a character.) I shared the photos on my facebook page; the few shown here are from that album.

Jack in his poker room with a couple bottles of Kretsch Family Maple Syrup.

I told Jack that I have a small maple tree in my yard, and he gave me a tap, line and pail to see what I might be able to draw from it. It's a small diameter tree that I planted maybe 15 or so years ago from a little sprout that was growing in the hedge row between us and our neighbor. It shot up like a weed and is as tall as our two-story home now. I didn't get much sap from it, only a gallon or so. Last night I boiled down what I had collected and was very excited to be able to bottle some maple syrup. It was a damn small bottle (a former hot sauce bottle), but it's maple syrup I actually made myself from my own tree. And that's a pretty sweet deal.

My own maple syrup. Next year I intend to pursue making maple syrup on a larger scale.

I'll follow this entry up with one that goes into the actual process of making maple syrup, and will share some of the lessons I learned from Jack that I think help set his syrup apart from some of the others on the market.

More wine

We had more apple pulp at the end of last fall than we had carboys to ferment it in. So I placed it all in lidded pails and let it sit outside all winter (I figured it was cold enough, and it did stay frozen through much of the winter). With the recent warm weather we've had I also thought I better follow up with that cache of pulp before it fermented too much, got moldy or turned to vinegar. So, last Friday I squeezed the juice from the pulp, filled a large carboy with it, poured in a couple of cups of blueberry pomegranate juice to top it off, added pectic enzyme and wine yeast, and capped it with an airlock.

The over-wintered juice had a subtle though decidedly wine-like flavor and aroma already. Clearly the pulp had fermented to some degree before I extracted the juice. So, we'll see how it turns out, and right now it is fermenting away with the airlock doing its little dance at an efficient pace.

I also racked and bottled from three gallon-sized jugs that had been fermenting, two of apple wine and one of marigold wine. The two apple wines were made from juice from the same batch of foraged apples but I used a different yeast for each jug: one a Lalvin EC-1118 and the other a Pasteur Champagne yeast. The wine made with the champagne yeast did indeed have a champagne-like quality to it. It was drier and slightly "fizzy." I think it still needs to age for a few months in the bottle before drinking.

Just bottled marigold and apple wines.

The EC-1118 wine was delicious right away. We'll probably drink that up over the next few weeks. We did set aside one of the bottles for our friend Steph Davies as a small gift for the Grand Opening of her new art gallery in Milwaukee, called Waxwing. 

A label I quickly sketched and glue-sticked to the bottle for the Waxwing opening.

The marigold wine definitely needs some time to age further, and I'll check it in another couple of months. It is beautiful wine though, with a lovely rose color. We got five bottles each from the apple wine jugs and four from the marigold wine jug.

Today I racked and bottled the carboy of apple wine to which we had added cloves and cinnamon. I suppose you could call it a mulled wine, although it is not as rich in spice as the kind of mulled wine you might make on your stovetop. We added cloves and cinnamon sticks during the last two months of the second fermentation. I think this wine will be a good one after it ages a bit longer. We got 23 bottles from that batch.

Apple wine with clove and cinnamon. 

We've got one large carboy of highbush cranberry wine yet to bottle. That particular batch has a story all its own, which I'll share when I bottle it.

Making mustard is so easy

We did a little grocery shopping last week and picked up, among other things, one of those inexpensive small hams, the kind that you just keep in the fridge and pull out to carve a few slices for a sandwich whenever the mood hits. Earlier today, hungry but in a bit of a hurry and not wanting to spend time cooking, I did just that. I quickly slapped together a simple ham & cheese sandwich, with mustard and mayonnaise. Nothing special.

It filled me up but left me profoundly unsatisfied. In fact I actually felt a little peeved after eating it. I knew this ham would be mostly bland and flavorless when I bought it. But it was cheap and I figured it would serve its purpose well enough.

Not today. Everything about that sandwich irked me: the fact that I spent money on something I normally would not have, the blandness of it all, even the predictable flavors of factory-made mustard and mayo. It was like that once-a-year urge I get to eat fast food, which is always followed by a feeling of regret and self recrimination.

So, what does one do when one's foodie mojo has been sullied? He makes mustard, that's what! Making your own mustard (and other condiments) is one of the most simple and easy things you can do in the kitchen, and can markedly improve just about any dish or recipe you make.

mustard seeds

At its simplest all you need to make a good mustard is mustard seed and a liquid binder of some sort (vinegar or even water, for example). Of course there are countless other ingredients you can use to customize a condiment like mustard. I had an old, almost empty bottle of Apple Pie Liqueur I had squirreled away from when we were making appletinis at Stumpjack a couple years ago. I thought the apple liqueur might provide a nice element of sweetness and that the alcohol would offer a bit of additional preservation to the mix. I've also been drying some raw ginger lately and thought that might add a nice cooling element to mustard seed's natural heat.

mustard seed and dried ginger

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup mustard seed 
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup Apple Pie Liqueur
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp grated dried ginger
• pinch of sea salt
• water

1. I grated the dried ginger with a microplane (which smells divine) and added it and the turmeric to the mustard seed. Turmeric has a potent earthy flavor and the color is wonderful.
2. I then added the seed/turmeric/ginger mix to a coffee grinder and processed it into a fine powder.

ground mustard, ginger, turmeric

3. Transfer the powdered mix to a bowl, add the Apple pie Liqueur and cider vinegar and mix well with a spoon.
4. Salt to taste.
5. Add water a tablespoon at a time and keep mixing until you get the consistency you want. I added 5 tablespoons water total.

That's it. The flavors come together and mellow out after sitting for a day or two (or three), although this recipe has a fairly solid whoa! factor. Spoon the mixture into a jar, cover it and set it in the fridge...after you smear some on another ham sandwich or piece of sausage and congratulate yourself for making something so darn tasty!

the finished mustard

Stumpjack Potato Hash w/ Kale

A few of us got together at our friend Dixie's flat yesterday morning for breakfast. Dixie made a huge German Apple Pancake, Pat brought the ingredients to make Mimosas with fresh raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, Marty recreated the Brown Sugar Bacon we used to serve at Stumpjack and I made the Potato Hash (with a slight twist) we also used to have on the Sunday morning menu.

This time I added kale and sweet potatoes to the hash recipe and it turned out great, with the oven crisped kale adding an interesting texture and slight note of tasty bitterness to the sweet and savory hash mix. And it looked pretty too.

Here's the recipe (the ingredient amounts are what I used to make enough for the seven people at breakfast).

Ingredients:

• 7-8 medium russet potatoes, peeled and chunked (I prefer my hash a bit on the larger side, but you can cube it into smaller pieces if you so desire)
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chunked
• 2 large onions, cubed
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• ~ 1 lb thick cut bacon
• sea salt and cracked pepper
• 1 tbl fennel seed
• ~ 1 tbl honey
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• couple medium leaves of kale, chopped
• 3-4 tbl olive oil

Pre-breakfast coffee appreciation moment.

1. Preheat oven to around 375° (I'm a little waffley on that temp because our oven is wacky right now and doesn't seem to want to behave consistently, so I'm constantly adjusting the dial and checking the temp.)

2. Place all of the chunked potatoes, russet and sweet, in a very large bowl. Drizzle olive oil over and toss to thoroughly coat. Season with salt and pepper, and a couple pinches of the fennel seed. Toss again. (When we made this hash at the coffee house we usually used a variety of heirloom finger potatoes, which made for a lovely dish with potatoes of white, yellow, red and purple).

3. Coat a couple of baking sheets with a bit of olive oil and spread the potato mixture on each pan. Bake for approx. 25 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked but still slightly firm.

4. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic, onions and half of the fennel seed and simmer for about 15 minutes, until everything is softened up and the butter has thoroughly embraced the flavors of the garlic, onions and fennel.

5. Cook the bacon; set aside to cool. After it's cooled and hardened a bit chop it into approx. 1-inch pieces.

6. Once the potatoes have cooked, return them to the bowl. Add the chopped kale, garlic/onion butter mixture, the rest of the fennel seed, and the bacon pieces. Drizzle with the honey. Gently toss to thoroughly coat and mix. Season with salt and pepper again if you think it needs it (I did).

7. Turn the oven up to 400°. Return the potato hash to the pans and bake for around 5 minutes, until the kale crisps up nicely.

Good food and good company make for an excellent breakfast. Image by Marty.

We had to drive over to Dixie's place so we transferred the hot hash to a large lidded pot and made the trip. Once we got there we didn't eat for another 45 minutes or so, so we kept the pot warm in the oven during part of that time (had to remove it to cook the brown sugar bacon, but it still maintained some heat and was warm when we sat down to eat). All of the flavors came together nicely during that time and the kale softened up as well. We left with an empty and clean pot.

Apple Wine Braised Rabbit

Here's a tasty recipe for rabbit I made the other night. I made some rabbit a few nights prior, using a recipe I pulled from Jamie Oliver's Italian cookbook. I didn't really care for it, but that was most likely due to me simply not being partial to a citrus based marinade rather than any shortcoming with the recipe, as I had seen rave reviews of that particular Oliver recipe.

In any event, as I had a couple rabbits awaiting the table I decided to go the route I almost always enjoy most, and that is coming up with my own recipe. So, I made a quick inventory of what we had in the cupboards and fridge, and then decided to use some of our still unbottled apple wine as the foundation for the marinade.

I snapped some fairly awful pictures of the process, feeling confident that the dish would turn out well. It did in fact come out wonderfully. No doubt this recipe would work well for just about any small game mammal or bird.

Here we go:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• few tbl EV olive oil
• Almost a whole stick butter
• Kosher salt
• 2-3 cups apple wine
• 2 rabbits, quartered
• 1 cayenne pepper
• few strips of salt preserved lemon
• 3-4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 tsp Pimenton (smoked paprika)
• 2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 big onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• small bunch cilantro, chopped
• some rosemary sprigs
• 1-2 tbl fresh ginger, grated
• 1 lime
• 1 cup canned tomato or puree
• tbl peppercorns
• tbl fennel seed

1. Grind the peppercorns and fennel seed in a coffee grinder or mortar & pestle, add around a tbl of rosemary leaves and continue to grind til well pulverized and mixed.

2. Make a marinade with the apple wine by adding the pepper/fennel/rosemary mix, the grated ginger, cilantro, juice of one lime, Pimenton and a couple pinches Kosher salt. Pour it over the rabbits and let it sit for at least a couple hours, stirring it around every so often.

3. After letting the rabbits soak in the wine bath it's time to get down to business. Heat 1/2 stick butter and a tbl olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion, garlic and a pinch of salt, and cook til they start to soften a bit. (If I had had celery on hand I would have added that to the mix as well...next time.)

4. Add the coconut milk, cider vinegar, tomato puree, lemon zest and cayenne pepper and continue to cook.

5. Take the rabbit out of the marinade and dry it off. Add the marinade to the stewing veggie mix, making sure to get all the spices at the bottom of the bowl.

6. Heat rest of butter and tbl olive oil in another large skillet over medium high. Add a bit of salt and pepper to the flour and dust the rabbit pieces in it.

7. Brown the rabbit on each side in the oil/butter.

8. Add the remainder of the flour to the veggie skillet and stir it in well.

9. Add the browned rabbit pieces to the veggie skillet and cook over medium to medium low until the rabbit is cooked through and tender, around 45 minutes or so. Turn the rabbit pieces over after 25-30 minutes. The sauce will reduce and thicken.

10. We plated it with some of the sauce/marinade and served with a small salad of greens and some garlic mashed potatoes (sweet potato/russet potato mix).

11. Our friend Pat joined us for dinner, pronouncing on facebook, "This was very good! I only remember having rabbit once before and it was fried in an Air Force dining hall. This was tender. The garlic mashed potato/sweet potatoes were excellent too." Pat brought a six-pack of Leinies Amber Bock, which looked and tasted great with the meal.

12. For desert we had a little shot of the rosemary peach noyau I made last summer. Candy alcohol heaven.

Pickled Eggs

We're planning on entering the urban chicken farming arena this spring and I've got a couple of small egg layers, possibly even a couple of quail, on my wish list just so that I can do some fun culinary things with little eggs. I've always liked good pickled eggs ("good" being those that don't taste solely of vinegar but rather have a nice depth of flavor from spices and other ingredients) and the image of a big jar full of brining quail eggs is sure to look fantastic and would make a great garnish for my famous Bloody Mary (famous to a few people anyway) or a martini.

I pickled some eggs this morning (shown above) and here's the simple recipe.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons pickling spice mix
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons sea or Kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon hot Thai or cayenne pepper salt
• dash of red pepper flakes
• 1/2 small onion, roughly chunked
• 4-5 garlic cloves, slightly smashed to open them up a bit
• couple teaspoons brandy.
• 12-18 regular-sized eggs
• 1 big jar with lid

1. Add the sugar and other spices to the vinegar and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Hard boil the eggs and peel.
3. Add the peeled eggs to the jar, interspersing with the garlic and onion.
4. Pour the pickling liquid over the eggs and then add the brandy to top it off.
5. Close the lid and let it sit in the fridge for a week or so.

That's it, easy as pie.

Road Kill Chili

I never did post the recipe for my "Road-Kill Chili" that won the 2011 Annual Manitowoc Christmas Parade Awesome Chili Cook-Off Death Match (I'm going with the notion that the more words you can fit into the title the more impressive it is; capitalizing the first letter of each word also lends an air of authenticity and prestige to the title). We held the potluck…er, I mean the 2011 Annual Manitowoc Christmas Parade Awesome Chili Cook-Off Death Match was held on November 23rd. I think there were a half-dozen entries, which I think is pretty impressive for something that was organized and marketed only a week before the actual event. And when I say organized and marketed I mean Kim (Geiser) made a facebook post that basically said, "Hey, anyone want to get together at my place during the Christmas Parade? How about if we each make some chili and we'll have a 'best chili' contest?" Such is the origin of many great and long-standing events.

This was the "trophy" for the chili cook-off: A bottle of merlot and sombrero.

There were some darn tasty chilis on the table, including a meaty chocolate chili from Jason Prigge, former chef of the much-missed Element Bistro in TR (I'm sharing that bit of information to reveal how stiff the competition was, which of course adds even more prestige to my victory…yes!). Best of all, the night was a lot of fun. Anyway, here's the recipe for the winning chili:

Road Kill Chili

I called the dish Road Kill Chili not because I incorporated any actual road kill, but because I used a couple ingredients I had foraged/hunted…that, and because it just sounds cool.

Ingredients (no amounts here because I did it off the cuff and didn't really measure anything)

• Chicken stock (I made my own stock but you can, of course, use any store-bought stock)
• A couple of de-boned squirrels (or rabbits, venison, chicken or whatever meat you prefer, chunked small)
• Apples, 4 or 5, peeled and chopped
• Ground spices: cumin, curry, salt, pepper, chili powder, nutmeg
• Hot sauce, I used just a couple of dashes of the hot sauce I make
• Onions, 2 of them, chopped
• Garlic, couple cloves minced
• Butter
• Olive Oil
• Heavy Cream (or half-&-half or whole milk if you don't have cream)
• Flour, maybe 1/2 cup
• Pinto beans, couple cans

1. Melt some butter and a bit of olive oil over medium heat in a very large saucepan.  Add the apples and onions and cook until they start to soften, maybe 4-5 minutes. Add most of the minced garlic; save a pinch for the meat. Season with a good amount of cracked pepper. Season with the other spices but less so because you're going to use the same spices on the meat and you don't want to overdo it. You don't want to overcook this; pull it when everything is cooked but still firm. Dump it all into a big pot and set aside.
2. Add to the same saucepan you just used a little more olive oil and butter and heat over a low-medium heat. Add the meat, lightly salt and pepper it, and cook until tender over low heat. When it's about halfway finished add the pinch of garlic and season it with the spices like you did with the onions and apples.
3. While the meat is cooking add chicken stock to the pot with the onions and apples, reserving a cup or two of the stock in another bowl. Add flour to the reserved stock and whisk until it gets creamy. Add the creamy stock to the pot and stir it all together.
4. When the meat is finished add it to the big pot as well. Heat over low-medium heat. Rinse the beans and add to the pot. Gently stir everything together. Add the cream (or half-&-half) and stir. Give it a dash or two of hot sauce. When the whole thing is at a palatable temperature taste it and add any additional seasoning you think it might need.
5. Ladle it up, pour a good lager for yourself and anyone else who's joining you, tell a few stories or watch the parade and enjoy!