Eating Around / Old Major

3316 Tejon Street - a seemingly unlikely, mostly  residential, neighborhood 

Portland ain't got nothing on Old Major in Denver.  I first read about the restaurant on Hank Shaw's Honest Food blog.  It was one of his guest chef stops on his Duck, Duck, Goose book tour.  I only saw that he was  going to be there after he'd gone.

When I looked at the menus I was sold.

I stopped in one evening around 5:00 or so and ate at the bar. By 5:30 or so the place started filling up, on a Wednesday evening no less.  To start, I had a half a dozen oysters on the half shell. During happy hour they're $2 a piece.  I drank a glass of the house Chardonnay with the oysters; the house wines are made by The Infinite Monkey Theorem which is a Denver winery without a vineyard.   I love the name (and the theorem) of the company, even if I didn't much care for their Chardonnay.  I followed the oysters with a half an order of the Port Shank Stroganoff which is a stroganoff made with braised pork, hand made pappardelle, and foraged mushrooms.  It was excellent and I drank a very nice glass of Pinot Noir with it.  I'm not much of a desert person but the bartender, Raquel, convinced me to have the macaroon with the press pot of coffee I ordered.  It was a rose/lemon macaroon and I was glad I'd listened to Raquel's recommendation.  The pastry chef, Nadine Donovan, came to Old Major from Le Pigeon and The Woodsman in Portland.  Small world.

Old Major

3316 Tejon Street

720-420-0622

oldmajordenver.com

Elk Milanese

Last week, poking around on the net, I ran across Hank Shaw's recipe for Jaeger Schnitzel and immediately I wondered why on earth I had never made elk Milanese.  My wife spent time growing up in Argentina and her family made Milanese whenever good veal was available.  I whipped this dinner up last night after a long day at work.  Call it what you like: Milanese, Wiener Schnitzel, Steak and Frites, Chicken Fried Steak and Fries.  Whatever, it was a truly excellent meal that I can hardly wait to repeat.

Elk Milanese:
Slice an elk steak into thin slabs, maybe 1/2" thick and then, covered with a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper - pound/press them even flatter.  I used a wine bottle. A quarter of an inch thick is fine and even thinner is not unacceptable.  Salt and pepper the meat.  Have three shallow plates - one with flour, one with a beaten egg and the third with bread crumbs. Heat 1/2 a stick of butter and olive oil in a large pan (I use a cast iron frying pan).  Add as much olive oil as needed to make the oil  1/4" to 1/2" deep in the bottom of the pan.  Dip the meat in the flour, then coat with egg and finally drop it in the bread crumbs, sprinkle a bit more on top and press.  Once the oil is hot - place the breaded meat into the pan and cook for a few minutes a side - until golden brown.  Put them on a paper towel to soak up any remaining oil and then put them in a warm oven while the next batch cooks. Garnish with sliced lemon wedges.

A favorite food book.

Packed away somewhere in my basement is a copy of Joseph Wechsberg's  book The Cooking of the Vienna's Empire. I can't remember the exact trick but I seem to recall that he has rather excellent advice on how to flour, egg and bread the meat so that the crust lifts off in a thin layer.   Maybe it was in his other excellent book Blue Trout and Black Truffles - also some in my basement.  I could not find Wechsberg's technique in any of the cook books I do have access to.  I was surprised that it is not mentioned in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book, but it isn't.  I am surprised that Nicola Fletcher does not include a Milanese recipe in her excellent book Ultimate Venison Cookery.

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Between the two of us, we shared a small elk steak, a large potato and a bottle of Chardonnay.  The potato was cut into fries using an inexpensive but handy mandolin.  A salad would have been a nice addition - but it was late and I was tired and we were hungry.  Properly done, this a rather delicate presentation - a thin golden brown crust, with the meat still pink inside.   The earthy and slightly gamey flavor of the elk was magnificently present. We drank a Chardonnay with this - perhaps not the best choice, but it was the bottle we first opened when we got home and really, it was just fine with the meal. Next time perhaps we may uncork a light red - perhaps a Pinot Noir.   This meal is highly recommended.

Snipe Recipes

Snipe at Dawn - Aiden Lassell Ripley (1986-1969)

Dan on the Rock asked about cooking and eating snipe.  As snipe are small birds - it takes more than a few of them to provide a real meal.  I combined the two I killed recently with a single dove to make some tapas before a more substantial meal of grouse in blackberry/pepper sauce.   After a long day in the field, the expedience of just breasting the birds out seems to be the way to go.  If you have more time, a plucked and roasted bird is a perhaps more fitting way to prepare them.  If you're short of snipe recipes, they can always be cooked in the same way as woodcock, though woodcock may provide slightly more meat.  The first game birds I ever managed to kill were woodcock near Williamsburg Virginia.

Snipe and dove breast tapas.
 

Sauteed Snipe Breast on Toasted Baguette RoundsIngredients: As many snipe breasts as you can muster; butter; salt, freshly ground pepper and a medium hot chili powder; rounds cut from a baguette; and (optionally) a few drops of truffle oil.Method: Breast out the birds. Salt and pepper the breasts and sprinkle on a dash of chili powder. I use Fernandez Chilie Molido Puro which is available in my Safeway store in 7 oz. bags. Slice the baguette into thin rounds - about 1/4". Melt a generous portion of butter in a frying pan, add a drop or two of truffle oil and then dip the bread into the butter and place them on a plate in a warm oven.  Add the breasts to the butter and brown them on both sides until medium rare.  Place them on the toast and enjoy with a favorite glass of wine.  A dry white or a light red like a Pinot Noir goes well.

There is a nice web site devoted to snipe hunting. They have a  list of recipes including the old standby, snipe wrapped in bacon.  Also a favorite way of mine to cook dove - wrap a small piece of jalapeno in the breast and then wrap the breast with bacon - grill until the bacon is nicely browned.  Hank Shaw at Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook has done some nice writing about snipe. He has a somewhat elaborate recipe and a plainer one too.   The Derrydale Game Cookbook by L. P. Gouy lists 24 recipes for woodcock and any could be used for snipe as well.

Trout caviar

I catch far more trout than I eat.  In fact, I don't bring fish home all that often.  I do keep a couple of fish occasionally.  My fishing partner usually keeps a fish or two and last time I saw him walking to the truck with his catch I decided I'd keep a couple too, if I hooked up again.  It seems like once you make a decision to keep a fish, you don't get another one.  My luck held and I kept two fish, one was a 16" hen full of eggs.  I guess if I'd have looked closer I would have noticed the fish was a hen and I probably would have released her. Instead, I whacked her on the head with a rock only to realize what I'd done when I gutted her stream side.  I decided to keep the eggs to make trout caviar following Hank Shaw's instructions over at Honest-Food.net.

A zoologist friend told me that there was a danger of parasites - broad fish tapeworm (Diphyllobothrium latum). From what I read, trout caviar is the most popular caviar in Finland and freezing it for three days will kill the tapeworm larvae. The larvae themselves  are rather large (1/4" to 3/4") and trout caviar sold in Finland is carefully inspected and/or frozen before being sold.  Not sure how the freezing process affects the taste - texture seemed fine - but I was happier to have frozen it.

Following Hank's lead, I used mine as an accent on baked trout.  Next time I think I'll try this recipe for blinis with caviar and sour cream.

Cassoulet with Pheasant Leg Confit

A pot of cassoulet and confit being browned for serving.

A bit more than two years ago, in a fit of obsessive frenzied desire for confit, I bought a gallon of duck fat.  The internet is an astounding resource for those of us not living anywhere near a major city.  The fat was ordered through Amazon came from Hudson Valley Foie Gras.  A gallon of duck fat cost less than forty dollars but the shipping accounts for 2/3 more again.  I've been keeping mine frozen, but even frozen, fats can go rancid. I'm just now using the last of that stash, it's almost two years later and it is still good.  At the time of my first confit attack I made batches of Canadian Goose, Blue Grouse and Jackrabbit confit.  I occasionally use the duck fat to brown meat for stews but until recently, I have not gone on another confit making binge.

Pheasant legs in duck fat ready for the oven.

Confit (pronounced in English as "con-fee") is a ancient method of preserving meats and goes back at least to the Romans. Traditionally, the meat is salted and rested for a day or more and then submerged in its own fat and simmered in a stoneware pot very slowly until tender.  When stored in a cool place, the fat congeals and forms a barrier against air.  To eat a confit, the pot is heated again until the fat softens and the meat is plucked out and the pot is returned to the cool storage.  Meats preserved in this way and stored in a cool place can be good for months. Most commonly confits are made of duck, goose and pork but rabbits, hares and game birds are excellent. Other fats and oils can be used to make confit and even olive oil.  Of course game birds are lean so do not have enough of their own fat for confit; but if you gave a gallon of duck fat it is an astoundingly rich way to prepare them.  A game bird leg and attached thigh, submerged in fat and slow cooked will not dry out, it just gets falling off the bone tender.

Cassoulet is a baked white bean dish originating in southwest France that often includes, among other things, pork belly, pork rind, pork sausages and duck or goose confit. The bible on confit and cassoulet is Paula Wolfert's book The Cooking of Southwest France.  The one linked to here is a new edition. The book was first published in 1983 and my own copy is an early one which is unfortunately still in a box in my basement waiting for me to build bookshelves.  Wolfert's book popularized these dishes and she acknowledges that there are as many "authentic" cassoulet recipes as there are cassoulet cooks.  Because of the difficulty of obtaining exotic ingredients in  locally I often have to improvise, but that is part of the tradition of the dish.

Other cook books that are on my shelf (and not in boxes) that have confit and cassoulet recipes are Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook,  Jane Grigson's Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, and Hugh Fearningley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book   Hank Shaw's wild food cookbook Hunt, Gather, Cook includes confit recipes for game.  Hank's recipe (also available online here) uses a kind of Sous Vide method which requires the meat be sealed in plastic with just a little of the fat and slow cooked in a water bath; I don't have one of those sealers. Hank uses Olive oil and specifically warns against using duck fat claiming it will overpower the flavor of the pheasant - obviously I don't agree with him.  I'm thinking that the commercial duck fat I'm using must be far milder than what he is used to because the pheasant certainly is not overpowered by ducky flavor it in my experience.

A plate of cassoulet and confit.

I make my cassoulet using the fattiest pork bits I can find. Bourdain uses two pounds of pork belly. This time the best I could find were some fatty loin chops.  Ribs can be good too.  I dusted the chops with flour salt and pepper and browned them in duck fat. Of course if you don't have duck fat, just use some bacon fat. Add the browned chops to the bottom of the pot you will cook the cassoulet in. I cook mine in a large cast iron pot. In the same frying pan, saute a chopped onion and a hand full of garlic cloves. When the onions are browning up nicely, add 1/4 bottle of white wine, a bunch of thyme, salt and fresh pepper.  Let the wine boil for a few minutes and then pour that into the pot over the meat.  Pour in the haricot beans (which have been soaked overnight) and top up with 1/2 trotter gear and 1/2 water - to just cover the beans. If you don't have trotter gear, just use chicken broth.  Put the whole thing in the oven (uncovered) and cook at about 230°F for six to eight hours.

For the confit.  Rub the legs well with salt (this is a salt cure) and sprinkle them with some finely chopped thyme and pepper. Put them into a baggie in the refrigerator overnight while the beans are soaking.  To prepare the leg-thighs for cooking, remove as much of the salt as possible, dab them dry and place them in a casserole dish and cover them with duck fat. Put them into the oven at 230°F for six to eight hours. If they are not completely covered by the fat you may need to turn them occasionally.

When the cassoulet and confit is cooked, finish up the confit by browing the leg-thighs in a hot frying pan.  Serve a leg-thigh with a healthy serving of cassoulet and a bitter salad.  I have previously been publicly chastised for recommending a white wine with this meal but, barbarian that I am, I stand by my recommendation.  Most recommend a hardier red but perhaps because I do not have as much pork fat as some recipes call for (Bourdain wants two pounds of pork belly) my dish is lighter fare.

The 100th Monkey Effect

Albrecht Durer, A Young Hare 1502.

Back in January when I wrote the entries Jackrabbit Hunting  and Jackrabbit Cuisine  I searched for Jackrabbit recipes online and did not find much. Of course, my idea was to try some classic European hare recipes using Jack rabbit.   Since then, I have discovered a really delightful  blog called Hunter Angler Gardener Cook by Hank Shaw.  (The site is so good he was nominated for a James Beard award.) It is well worth the time to peruse the pages there.  He has written about Jack rabbits and hunting them and has a number of great looking recipes including one for Sardinian Hare Stew  and a recipe for Jugged Hare and a similar one for Civet de Livre.

I can't help but feel a bit like there is a 100th monkey effect at play here.  The claim made by proponents of the 100th monkey effect is that once an idea becomes known by enough monkeys (say 100), it has enough force to spontaneously spread to geographically isolated populations.  Soon everyone will be hunting, cooking, eating and writing about Jackrabbits.  Well, maybe not. But with the growing popularity of the local food movement, locavore hunting,  ethical meat and butchering, slow cooking and whole beast dining, this kind of thing is bound to happen.  There are so many classic European recipes for hare and those of us who like to hunt and gather our own food of course are quite likely to try substituting Jack rabbits for the European hare.  But there seems to be a larger meat movement underway.  For a time vegetarians  seemed to claim the moral high ground but meat is where it's at these days.

Twenty years ago I made a rather personal decision that if I was going to eat meat I should be able to hunt, kill and butcher my own meat.  This was pretty radical because no one in my family hunted.  I didn't feel I had to hunt, kill and butcher all the meat I ate, but at least some of it. I like beef and pork and lamb far too much to swear it off for a rather abstract ethical position.  Of course this killing and butchering business is not for everyone and I never really expected others to take it up, but for me it was essential.  And now, after Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma hit the best seller list it seems like all of the sudden my non-traditional hunting friends and I are on the leading edge of a new food movement.  Gerry is writing his own book about it and as far as I can tell, Gil is holed up on a farm somewhere in the mid-Atlantic states trying to reproduce the Jamon Iberico that the customs people confiscated on his return from Spain.

As for Jackrabbits vs. European hares.  I saw many European Hares  in Scotland though sadly I was not in a position to harvest them.  All hunting and fishing rights in Scotland are owned by someone, and I was no one.  Hank points out that you can buy Wild Scottish Hare from from D'Artagnan, purveyors of exotic gourmet meats and foods.  It would be nice to do a side-by-side comparison of  identical dishes prepared with Jackrabbit and European Hare.  I like the looks of Hank Shaw's  Sardinian Hare Stew, but maybe the comparison should be on something with a less rich sauce, something that would allow the flavors to really come through, perhaps a terrine.  The European hare from D'Artagnan is not inexpensive, but the experiment would be worthwhile.  If you try it, let me know.