1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Season the pheasant with salt and pepper inside and out. Lay the bacon over the pheasant and secure it with kitchen twine or toothpicks.
2. In a heavy-bottomed ovenproof pan, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter and brown the pheasants on all sides, 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the remaining tablespoon of butter to the pan and fry the apples quickly in the butter. Place the pheasants on top of the apples. Cover with tinfoil or a lid and place in the oven. Immediately lower the temperature to 425°F for 30 minutes. Five minutes before removing from the oven, pour the Calvados and heavy cream over the pheasant. Remove from the oven, untruss the pheasant, carve into joints, and serve very hot with the apples and sauce.
Also try: brant, coot, duck, gallinule, goose, grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, ptarmigan, quail, rail, snipe
Pheasant Tagine
Serves 4
I first learned a version of this recipe while cooking in the south of France, where the cuisine is so heavily influenced by the Mediterranean. The combination of spices is wonderfully aromatic and lends itself well to any combination of vegetables and protein. In true Mediterranean fashion, the dish itself is light and tangy, using only olive oil, not butter, and a good dose of lemon in two forms. You will need to preserve the lemon in advance or buy it from a specialty spice shop. A tagine is actually a clay pot with a deep cone-shaped lid, which is designed to keep the moisture within the dish. Once the cover is removed, the base can be used to serve from at the table. I tend to use a skillet, though, instead of a traditional tagine, because it browns the meat and vegetables better and can also be served tableside. It is also easier to use around the campfire.
8 pheasant legs, or 4 legs and 4 breasts, bone in
4 medium-size carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into 3-inch pieces
4 medium-size zucchini, halved lengthwise and cut into 3-inch pieces
2 large red bell peppers, seeded and cut into 3-inch-long thick pieces
1 whole preserved lemon (page 236), rinsed well, pulp and pith removed, sliced into strips or diced
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon cumin seeds (optional)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup olive oil, plus extra for browning
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and let marinate for 20 to 30 minutes.
2. Heat a tagine, large skillet, or heavy-bottomed casserole dish until very hot. Brown the pheasant parts in a bit of olive oil until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the vegetables and sauté with the pheasant.
4. Deglaze the pan with the marinade from the bowl and then lower the heat. Cook, covered, over low heat or in the oven at 350°F for 45 minutes.
Also try: brant, coot, duck, gallinule, goose, grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, ptarmigan, quail, rail, snipe
The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes.
—GEORGE SAND
8
Waiting for Pâté in the Floatant
The morning of my very first turkey hunt in the Village, in the days when high heels and martinis were much more familiar to me than camo and turkey callers, I saw a group of young wild hogs running across our taillights as the Commish and I drove to the woods before sunrise. I was blurry eyed still, sucking in hot coffee when I saw them and blurted out, “Those look good.” It was an instinct, a voice that came out and spoke without my help. The Commish laughed and I did, too. In the dark morning, those small hogs didn’t look like hairy four-legged creatures to me; rather, like running sausages. For as long as I have been alive, my memories have been defined by what I ate during those experiences. I couldn’t always tell you the name of the person I was with during that particular moment, but could describe in precise detail the Niçoise salad I had in 1995. I have a friend my age that may be the only person I know who also hunts with visions of running hams in his mind. Like me, Peter Pagoni found hunting not at birth but a bit later in life, while visiting all of his relatives in the Village. He is a lawyer and a professor by day, but in the wee hours of the morning, when it is still dark, he is a Louisiana duck hunter, as sincere as the rest, but a little more thoughtful and philosophical, a little more self-deprecating about the uncertainty of it all. I decide to go hunting with Peter next, in his beloved New Orleans.
On Bourbon Street, a shiny, smooth-skinned girl beckons to me from her door with two scarlet nails, dollars attached to her hips, her voice sweet and oily. The air is filled with competing music, some from the room of the girl, and some from other doors and windows, the notes collide, mixed into a cocktail of music that somehow makes sense, but only here.
Inside, against the sounds, are the sincere faces of the singers making them. Past that, through a miniature doorway, under a golden fleur-de-lis, is a man with a stiff underbite and a tall, black cap and shiny, tasseled shoes, who catches shrimp by day, and by night plays the drums as they have never been played before. Whiskers protrude from under his polished nose and his face reflects the orange light of the room crowded with strangers, all tapping their feet on the old wooden floor.
Out on the street, the blacktop shimmers and sweats in the lamplight and reflects the houses above, their facades studded with Romeo catchers and balconies that sag like rotting lace. The narrow shotgun houses wear peeling shutters with holes punched through and weeping ivy that slips its way in and out of the slats.
At Café du Monde, a man sits on a fire hydrant humming into his tuba, and inside, powdered sugar floats in a cloud across the room as people exhale into their beignets, and it drifts down again, into the pores of the place, soaking into the blue slate ground to be pecked by waiting pigeons.
Here in New Orleans, everyone is named Baby. It is one of the only places I know of where you can indulge in watching the girl with the two scarlet nails and sweet oily voice and have access to good duck hunting a few hours later, at five a.m. on Bayou Terra Buff.
At four a.m., Peter and I drive the road through Saint Bernard Parish and a series of bays that interconnect, until we arrive at a concrete boat launch. At the launch, a freshly dead coyote is being casually ignored, and surly-looking men in faded jeans look as though they haven’t left the site for many weeks. It is possible that they haven’t; duck hunting season for some is a religious institution.
To remind us, a pickup truck comes roaring from behind and screeches to a halt. Two boys jump out in full camouflage, their pirogue (pea-row), a narrow metal boat, decked out in fake straw cover.
“How has the hunting been?” Peter asks, to break the ice.
“Ah terrible!” the boy replies, rapidly setting up his boat to back into the water. “Five, four, one and seven,” he says, listing their kill for the past week. We let them go ahead; we can see in their eyes that they need to do it.
Once in the water, I slip down into our pirogue and sit on a netted pile of duck decoys. Peter’s golden Lab Marly jumps in after me and we slink into the shallow waters of the marsh, kicking up black mud with our propeller engine as we move farther away from land.
“Seven sounds like a lot to me,” I say to Peter, watching the boys disappear into the bayou.
“For some people, if you haven’t bagged your limit, then it’s a bad hunt,” he says. “Not everyone is as enlightened as we are,” he chuckles.
More than anything, it is the thought of a crisply roasted duck that wakes Peter at three a.m. on a Saturday morning. It is the thought of the sweet and salty tang of thinly sliced duck prosciutto that makes those early dark mornings worthwhile. A true academic at heart, he will study and research for hours how best to treat his kill; he will experiment in earnest and tell you all about his finding
s. He is a walking encyclopedia of well-researched thoughts and conclusions. He is the kind of person you want to be hunting with when your ultimate destination is the dinner table.
Bayou Terra Buff that we propel through is a naturally occurring swampy inlet that was once solid earth. The name came about because there were once many bison here, on the rare, firmer ground that could support such large animals. Now it has a shallow layer of water that moves like black hills of oil behind us, as smooth and uniform as mercury, with only a sliver of a moon to reflect on its motion.
On Bayou Terra Buff, it all seems a bit like an alternative world: water higher than earth, pelicans rising diagonally in a rope of pearls in the tall smartweed ahead. We are at sea level, higher than the city of New Orleans in the distance. As our boat sends ripples through the marsh, speckled coot, looking like a cross between seagulls and ducks, begin to walk on water in groups, their thick legs a blur of frenzied motion.
Peter banks the pirogue into the mud and I step out in my waders. I try to keep from sinking deeper and deeper into the marsh, which dances the line between stable ground and quicksand. Marly dives in, too, as Peter throws plastic duck decoys into the water, one by one, where they bob, peering down at their flawless reflections in the pink morning water. These decoys will hopefully signal to the real ducks that there is food here and they should come pay a visit.
There is a whole upside-down world in the reflection, even prettier than the one swimming right side up. The sky is a spectrum of color that repeats itself from up high to deep in the water, while the leafy green vegetation called floatant quakes, lights up green and incandescent on the surface.
The killdeer and snipe begin to streak low just where the upside-down world becomes right side up, and a single great blue heron lifts and beats its enormous paper wings.
So much of hunting is waiting. It is that waiting that makes the fleeting, action-packed moments so thrilling. Those uncomfortable moments among the elements, those feelings of despair, the slight adrenaline flush that comes and goes in an instant, are what make hunting feel like hunting. It is when the discomfort no longer feels like discomfort, as you learn to adapt and become more integrated with your surroundings, that you begin to feel like a hunter. As we wait, the cold pushes us to hunch down on a stool to store warmth. I can see my breath in the cottony air as the ducks come in waves, high in the sky and far in the distance; sometimes they flirt with our decoys, but never close enough. There are green-winged teal and blue-winged teal and a cinnamon teal from time to time. Once there is even a pintail. Their silhouettes against the quiet panorama are impressive. There is nothing but glowing violet sky and water and the green incandescent floatant, simmering above the shoreline.
In southern Louisiana, there are two predominant species of ducks—teal and gadwall. There are some pintails, too. The mallards spend their time in Arkansas, unless it is very cold, then they are forced south. The first ducks to arrive from Canada are blue-winged teal. They begin their journey in the middle of August. They are the first to migrate and the last to go back, which means they are especially averse to cold. In some areas in the South, there is a special early season to hunt them.
The federal government gives each state a window to set a sixty-day duck-hunting period. It is often scheduled in two segments, with a break between. In years when the duck populations become too low, there is a forty-five day season, though it has been over a decade since that has happened.
What determines duck populations more than anything are the conditions in Canada, and in North and South Dakota, called the pothole region, because the landscape is full of gouges—1- and 2-acre holes. These potholes are determined by the rainfall in Canada and the Dakotas. The more rain and snow, the more potholes that provide good nesting and breeding grounds, and the better the duck population. When there are fewer potholes, the ducks are more concentrated, which means in turn that the population is more vulnerable to predators, which means the ducks have a lower rate of nesting success.
In dry years, the potholes begin to fill in, and farmers that have been farming around them can suddenly farm across them. When this happens, the nesting grounds, with their good, tall, grass cover, disappear.
Blended into the marshland that connects with Bayou Leary, Peter lets out a hail call, the mating call of a female, then he lets out a feed call. “That’s our signal to the other hunters that we aren’t seeing anything,” Peter laughs, letting the sentence die. There is an art to calling ducks—the high-pitched preep-preep of the male teal; the soft, rasping kreep of the male mallard. In true scholarly fashion, Peter listens to duck-calling CDs in his car as he drives.
After the calls, the tinkle of dripping water is the only sound as we hover behind our blind of straw grass, fastened to two poles to break up our silhouettes. This is a meager attempt to compete against one of the duck’s strongest senses—their sight. They can detect our slightest movement from high in the sky.
The ducks fly by in different patterns, depending on their breed; the lead at the point trades off from time to time, once it tires of being a windbreak for the others. The wind is helpful to the duck hunter. When it is very windy, the ducks don’t want to expend their energy being out in open water, so they come into the marsh. On windless days, they go out far from the hunter’s shotgun, where no one will bother them.
The Commish, who is Peter’s second cousin, once put it to me very simply while sitting in a deer stand. “Every animal wakes up every morning thinking about one thing,” he said. “Survival. What they’re going to eat. So that dictates their movements.”
That instinct dictates their daily movements and also their migratory patterns. “If everything freezes up here, then they can’t get to the food, so they’ll go a little farther south,” he said. “They’ll follow the freeze line. This is my theory, but I think there are certain ducks imprinted to certain areas; there are ducks that will only migrate to Chicot County. But then, there’s a bigger concentration that are just coming as far south as they have to. Mallards usually show up in numbers in Arkansas at the end of December, when it freezes up in Missouri.”
The truth is, we don’t really know why ducks or any animals do what they do. And that is a beautiful thing. People make a career out of trying to understand the behaviors and patterns of nature. The best outdoorsmen will tell you that it is endlessly satisfying to them—the great mystery of nature and animal behavior.
Peeling clementines and watching the glow of the marsh and the occasional darting cloud of birds, Peter and I sit and talk about what is endlessly satisfying to us—the place in the world where the outdoors and food collide. You will often hear such phrases as “a gaggle of geese” or “a brace of duck”—Peter refers to coot as a “pâté of coot” because their livers and gizzards are so big. They aren’t really in the duck family and are virtually impossible to pluck, with hairlike fibers in the skin, but their livers are luscious. “Canvasback are the best eating duck,” Peter declares, feeding Marly a piece of clementine. We talk about how to make New Orleans duck taste better, because it has a fishier taste than ducks do in Arkansas.
The beauty of cooking wild animals is that it doesn’t just start with you and the cutting board; it is the whole cycle of life that you have to consider: What did this duck eat? And what did the thing it ate, eat? All of this affects how it tastes, how you prepare it, and what exactly you eat from it and with it. Maybe the duck is brined to remove the fishiness from the skin; maybe the skin is removed and the meat cured in salt. At the very least, it is always eaten rare.
The water hyacinth are flourishing in our patch of shaky ground. This means that the salt water that drifts in hasn’t overrun the plant life this year. One of Peter’s other passions is environmental law, and while we talk about duck terrines and pâtés, he also talks about the erosion of the land he calls home. He says that the levees prevent the silt from rebuilding the erosion. He talks about the bodies of water as if they are his children, of the art
eries named Delacroix and Reggio; and the mouth of the Mississippi named Venice; and the series of bays that interconnect; and Lake Bourne, the lake that released the huge wall of water, like a tidal wave, onto New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. “Katrina punctuated a lot of environmental problems that were already here,” he says.
Just then, three ducks fly low toward our decoys, and we both spring up from the blind, clementine peels flying from our laps and shots ringing into the air. All three of the ducks drop from the sky and make a dent in the water, sending up a splash with their limp bodies. Marly begins a running dive toward them paddling with gusto. She brings them back one by one, small and wet, in the soft pink padding of her jowls. Then just as quickly things are quiet again, and we sit and wait, clementines once again in our laps. Yes, it is beginning to feel like hunting.
By ten o’clock we have collected four green-winged teal. It is not enough for a terrine or a pâté or a confit or a large dinner party. So we decide to hunt coot. Coot are considered by many to be a “garbage” bird, not quite duck status. But they have hearty legs nice for a confit, and their gizzards are large enough to fill a terrine with ease. We drive the pirogue through the shallow water, past decoys and litter stranded in the marsh, past fishermen casting. The coot are on the move, tapping their feet against the surface of the water and letting up a splash. Hunting coot that are walking in shallow water turns out to be just as difficult as shooting a duck high in the sky. But in the end we have enough bird for some experimental cooking.
We pluck on the dock, and the pelicans sit and observe us, their necks bent in S-shaped curves, inquiring about some fish scraps. But all we have are duck feathers, which fly up and out onto the water, flickering green and purple. Ducks are easiest to pluck when they are freshly killed, and some ducks give their feathers up more easily than others. It is a commitment to pluck one, but the duck you pluck will taste so much better than the one you don’t.
Girl Hunter Page 13