doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What is for dinner?

Spatchcock pheasant in the crockpot:





Per my hunting buddy and foodie Lloyd, the bird was hung 100 hours, then, drawn and plucked. I removed the spine down both sides of the back, and laid him out on a bed of celery, and added enough of a mixture of half and half and chicken stock, mushrooms and pearl onions to mostly hide him. Garlic sea salt and pepper. This was a pretty fat bird. It isn�t a formal recipe, just a combination of things I had on hand that seemed like they would be good. The farmer says they run tough this time of year.
Probably have him with mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, a steamed green veggie, and my last bottle of Brazilian wheat beer.

Best,
Ted

Dinner:





It was wonderful.

Best,
Ted

They way you cooked it Ted had to make it tender. That looks fantastic.

During the winter we like to make sort of one-dish meals...lots of Shepard's pie, cottage pie, curry's of various sorts....that sort of thing. We make a huge pot of beef stew that last for a couple of weeks depending on presence of predators.......visiting sons..... It doesn't look like much but it is actually fantastic on a 3 season day:



Genevieve�s Beef Stew
big stew - can be downsized

6 lbs Angus beef stew meat cubed
1 quart box Nature�s Promise low sodium beef broth
1 14.5 oz can vegetable broth
2 purple onions
1 yellow onion
8 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt/ 2 pinches of fresh ground blackpepper
1 tbs Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp Maggi sauce
1 pinch cumin
1 pinch ground chili pepper
1 pack baby carrots
1 pack yellow corn
1 pack peas
3 russet potatoes
6 tbs of peanut oil

Roast meat (on 7) in peanut oil (about 3 min) - 1/2 at a time; add salt, ground pepper, add more oil as needed, careful not to burn, stir constantly.
Slice onions on a slicer (1/2 rings)
take meat out and cook onions in juice until caramelized (10 min). add oil as needed; scrape up meat residue with onions using a wooden spatula
put meat back in with onions and add the broth, mix
1/4 cup flour in a measuring cup, + 3/4 cup of broth; whisk. Strain into stew.
Add Maggi Sauce, Worchestershire, salt, pepper, cumin, ground chili pepper
add garlic - large chunks
cook for 2 hours - on 7 till bubbling; throttle back to 5, then on 2.

Add whole baby carrots; frozen vegetables & raw potatoes and simmer for another 2-3 hours
Adjust spices

+ 1 tomato and parsley

Gene,
The pheasant was quite tender.

Your lovely wife�s stew looks and sounds remarkably like my Irish Mother�s stew, which, she used a pressure cooker to soften tougher cuts of meat for the stew.

My mother always made a big pot of mashed potatoes, and served the stew over them.
Mom�s would not have had chili pepper in it, otherwise, the recipes would interchange.

Good stuff.

Best,
Ted

Pressure cooker works and is very efficient. Gv, who really would be happy in post WWI Alsace, prefers the Le Creuset cast iron slow cooker...Results are the same in the end. We do use her very old French Pressure Cooker to make a French vegetable soup/potage.

Our cast iron is Lodge. We have a bunch of it. The Le Creuset was above my pay grade when I was buying pots and pans after I got married-it would have interfered with good gun purchases.
We do have a glass on iron Lodge pot that gets used for soups and brazing, but, I don�t believe it is as big as yours.




Best,
Ted

Soft crabs for lunch. Baby back ribs, with an appetizer of Dove breast wrapped in bacon for dinner. Season needs to come soon, I starting to run low on Dove breast. I had 300 plus. Where did they all go? Oh yeah, on the grill wrapped in bacon. Yum, Yum.

Argo44, I think I will copy your recipe and adjust it for my wife. She can not do Gluten anymore. So out with the flour, and in with corn flour or corn starch. The rice flour substitutes are poor for soups and stews.

Jon,
Try masa heraina as a substitute for flour. I�ve used it in chili and stews for decades. No gluten issues, here, but, with a South American wife, we always have it on hand.

Best,
Ted

All the comments about slower cooking had me thinking about using our sous vide gadget on game, and tougher cuts of interesting meats. Last fall, we did some big horn sheep that friends gave us. It turned out moist and tender, but medium rare. Good stuff.

Summer is here. Pork ribs on the Weber, in a bunch of hickory smoke:



Dinner was my happy problem, last night. Momma, not so patiently waiting:



She eats like a pack mule at sunset. How she maintains 115lbs is a mystery to me.

Main event, on the plate. There were some dinner rolls, and a butter lettuce and spinach salad, with walnuts, croutons, dried cranberries, and poppy seed dressing, but, they weren�t on the plate just yet.



Good fare, cooked at home.





Best,
Ted