So, Just What can You Do With That Peacock?
So, Just What can You Do With That Peacock?A friend of mine is about to have his annual cabin roast weekend, and he has chosen peacock to cook (he often chooses something a bit unusual). Although I am not a vegetarian, even this raises my eyebrows!
Peacock is a dark, sweet, juicy meat not unlike duck but considerably less fatty. I recommend checking the degree of fat on the carcass, and barding (draping with fat bacon or rubbing/injecting with butter or oil) if the bird is a lean one. Simple roasting or braising will bring out its unique and delicate flavor; do not overcook peafowl. A good herbal pairing would be herbs du provence with lavender and thyme, or perhaps fresh rosemary. Roasted or braised root vegetables or squashes are another good accompaniment to this delicately flavored and savory meat.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to the roast nor did I have anything to do with the choice of "entree."
Interesting that you anticipate resentment at the idea of eating a peacock. Is there a material difference between a killing a peacock and killing a chicken, or is it that we are simply anesthestized to the idea of taking the lives of some animals and become aware that death enters the equation only when we speak of eating an animal we don't unconsciously categorize as not-alive food already?
Regards,
Tanith Tyrr
Bay Gourmet
"This is what is meant by `sacrifice,' literally, the `making sacred' of an animal consumed for dinner. Yet sacrfice, because it dwells on the death, is a concept often shocking to the secular modern Western mind—to people who calmly organize daily hecatombs of beasts, and who are among the most death-dealing carnivores the world has ever seen."
Margaret Visser: The Rituals of Dinner
If you skin them while they are still warm, it's fairly easy to pull the skins off. If you let those tough membranes cool, it's a bit harder. Some people recommend skinning before gutting, and that is not a bad idea, but I might reverse that order on a very hot day.
To field dress a squirrel and preserve the pelt, remove all four paws at the wrist joint, and cape the head if you desire a full face pelt. Use small, delicate scissors to cut open the belly skin without penetrating into the muscle wall of the abdomen. Cut down the insides of all four legs, and around the rectum at the base of the tail. Strip the skin away from the meat. Blunt nosed pliers will help you keep your grip when peeling the legs. If you wish to keep the tail on the pelt, remove the skin of the back first, and peel the tail up about two thirds of the way before using strong scissors to cut it off at the bone.
To clean the squirrel, use delicate small scissors or a small knife to open the abdominal cavity, placing one finger inside the cavity to keep the knife away from the intestinal mass. Carefully remove the intestines and discard. Wash the carcass, or wipe it clean. Remove edible innards, and reserve them for stocks and sauces.
Squirrel is a savory dark meat, flavorful, sweet and very tender when the animals are young. Older animals belong in a stew or confit; very young, tender animals might be simply grilled on a charcoal fire with a brushing of butter or good quality olive oil and few sprigs of aromatic herbs to enhance their natural fragrance and delicacy.
Squirrel meat tends to be somewhat low in fat, though not as much so as rabbit—as with any game animal, much will depend on the individual animal's diet, sex, age and breeding condition.
Excellent flavor pairings with squirrel: bacon, lemon juice, sour cream, arrugula and other bitter spring greens, earthy root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips and celeriac, horseradish sauce, wild and domestic mushrooms.
Squirrel is absolutely delicious cooked very simply to showcase its natural flavor when it's young and tender. It is a bit darker and greasier than rabbit, but its flavor is equally delicate. If you want to show off a bit, try grilled squirrel brushed with a dressing of crushed raspberries, chopped rosemary and olive oil. If hubby and friends are less cuisine oriented and want something heartier, serve roasted squirrel over braised wild garlic greens and endives with plenty of wild rice cooked with pecans on the side. The trick with young squirrel is cooking it until it's done, but no longer—don't let the tender, sweet and delicate meat dry out. Brushing with a quality cooking oil (olive, walnut, etc.) or with butter is recommended during cooking.
Oil the bottom of a cast-iron frying pan by frying some bacon; reserve bacon. Dredge squirrel in seasoned flour, and fry on low-medium heat till golden brown. Drain the oil from the pan thoroughly.
Add enough lemon juice, white wine and sour cream to the pan to cover the squirrel; season with garlic and herbs and pepper to taste. Some fresh herbs are also nice if you have them. Let it simmer uncovered in that wonderful- smelling until the meat is very tender, and serve with freshly baked, crusty bread and crisp vegetables, with the bacon on top. This recipe works nicely for squirrels of indeterminate age, but the sauce seems to come out better with older and fuller flavored animals that can be simmered until the meat is falling-off-the-bones tender. A younger one won't need as long a simmering time, so keep checking the sauce.
This preparation will work with older animals very nicely; younger and more tender animals may be better on the grill, or dredged in flour and fried or baked.
Skin and clean two large squirrels. Wash the carcasses free of blood, and pat dry. Disjoint into four leg sections, one saddle (just above the pelvis) and one rack (the ribcage). Using large kitchen shears, snip off the lower part of the ribcage and any parts of the saddle that are not directly attached to meat, such as the pelvis. Reserve the rack; you can prepare it as you would a Frenched rack of lamb if you wish by scraping the ends of the bones clean, and cutting down the center of the backbone lengthwise to create two sets of "squirrel chops".
In a small saucepan, simmer down the bones and the edible internal organs (heart, liver minus the green gallbladder, kidneys, lungs, diaphragm) with some carrots, onions and bay leaves to create a small amount of fragrant demiglace. Reserve.
Rub the joints all over with a good quality salt and some herbs to taste; I like to use the "Herbs du Provence" blend with some thyme, lavender, basil and oregano. Leave them in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, rinse them briefly and dry thoroughly on paper towels.
Prepare enough clean rendered fat (duck or goose fat is ideal, but clean pork or bear lard will do; beef tallow is undesireable) to completely cover all of the squirrel parts to be preserved. Gently boil the squirrel parts in the fat on a low simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, checking and stirring frequently to avoid parts sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the meat is tender and falling off the bone, remove and drain all the fat if serving immediately.
Roast the reserved, Frenched squirrel chops seperately to medium doneness, with the broth demiglace as a sauce. About 5 minutes in a 425F oven should do, or you can pan-fry the chop sections in a skillet. After the chops are cooked, you can slice them into individual tiny chops as a garnish for the confit dish if desired.
If you wish to preserve the squirrel meat, debone the cooled, cooked meat and put it in a clean glass jar. Strain the fat, and pour it over the meat. Make sure there is at least 1/2" of melted fat above the level of the meat, and store it in a cool, dark place, ideally the refrigerator.
In medieval times, potted game was kept in this way for up to a year, and remained sweet and free from decay. Modern recipes advise taking more stringent safety precautions and storing the finished confit in the refrigerator and using it within a month.
To serve squirrel confit, heat it, drain the fat well, and serve it with a crisp salad of spring greens, garlic mashed potatoes and freshly baked bread.
This is a recipe that best showcases younger, more tender animals. Disjoint the carcass as described in the earlier recipe, Frenching the rack and splitting the backbone down the middle. Remove the thigh bone and the shoulder bone from the hind and forelegs, keeping the forelimb bone intact. Make stock from the bones; you may need to enrich the stock with additional meat or bones from a larger animal, or leftover chicken, veal or pork.
To bone a squirrel (or any small animal), use a small, sharp knife to cut all the way around the end of the bone below the "knob", severing tendons and muscle attachments. Scrape downwards with the blade to push the flesh down on the bone.
Stuff the pockets created in the legs with lightly sauteed wild mushrooms and spring garlic or onion greens. Dredge the stuffed legs lightly in seasoned flour and brown in a small amount of hot butter in a covered skillet. Add enough wine and well-reduced stock to keep the liquid about 1/4" deep around the stuffed legs, and braise until the meat is completely done and runs clear when pierced.
Roast the rib chop and saddle sections, deglaze the pan juices with wine and stock, and serve as a garnish to the stuffed legs. This makes a very attractive presentation.
Bon appetit,
Tanith Tyrr
"As viscous as motor oil swirled in a swamp, redolent of burnt bell peppers nested in by incontinent mice and a finish reminiscent of the dregs of a stale can of Coca-Cola that someone has been using as an ashtray. Not a bad drink, though."
Excerpt from "The Moose Turd Wine Tasting" by T. A. Nonymous
So, to determine age, do you check ID? Teeth? Gonadal development (and how would one know?)? Grey roots? Tail doesn't stand up quite the way it used to? Cellulite? Ears droop? AARS card? Older than what?
If you see the squirrel getting the senior discount on the subway, then it is an older animal. An AARS card found in its possession is also a likely indicator.
Assuming your squirrel is not collected on the subway and has no cards in its possession, here are the standard tests for age. None of them are foolproof, so do them all and get a general impression.
I actually like old, flavorful squirrel stew as much or more than tender young roasted or grilled squirrel. Don't stew young bushytails or roast old ones; the flavors and textures don't come out right and it's a waste of their extremely fine but very different culinary potential.
If in doubt, cut off a small piece of meat from the hindquarters and fry it very briefly in a small amount of oil. Bite into it when it's piping hot and seasoned only with a dash of salt and pepper. Is it tough and fibrous as well as deeply, intensely flavored, or meltingly tender and juicy with a milder flavor? Tougher squirrels benefit from old fashioned stew and simmer recipes, while tender young'uns can be used very much like fryer rabbit in a number of creative dishes.
Geez, now I'm all hungry. No, wait, disregard everything I wrote here. Squirrels taste awful and horrible, and if you catch any, you should immediately express mail all of them to me for, um, disposal, while you serve your friends a nice chicken dinner.
Hopefully,
Tanith Tyrr
Bay Gourmet
"Live fast, die young, and leave a flat patch of fur on the highway."
Squirrel's motto
Frenched Rabbit PresentationI just thought of something I should mention in this regard. Jack ordered a rabbit dish [at the French Laundry]. He was served two pieces of rabbit fillet, maybe off of the loin. Maybe the breast. I don't know. He was also served a rack of rabbit. There it was. The little rabbit ribs, the chops connected. The amazing thing was that the ribs were Frenched. OK. When you French a rack of lamb, the bones are big enough to see. Frenching a rack of rabbit is just something else.
When I want to do a really spectacular presentation, I always french a rack of rabbit. It honestly is not that hard if you scrape with a knife and are careful to remove all the membrane between the ribs.
I recommend brushing the exposed bones with olive oil. (Heck, brush the whole thing, and while you're at it, crush a clove of garlic and some rosemary and add that to the oil. Yum.) If you don't, and you roast at high temperatures, the ends of the bones can crisp and become brittle or burned.
My presentation for rabbit goes like this, starting with the whole animal. I debone all four legs (hindlegs and thighs in one piece, forelimbs and shoulders in one piece, remove all bone). I pound the pieces of meat flat under plastic wrap with a mallet, stuff them with a mixture of fresh herbs, bread crumbs and prosciutto, or perhaps blue cheese and walnuts and basil, and tie them into rolls.
Then I trim the saddle, which is the part in front of the pelvis which you just removed the thighs from, into one neat long section that ends at the bottom of the ribcage. Put the saddle aside for roasting whole, or you can take it into small saddle chops.
I use scissors to remove the bottom half of the ribcage (the belly portion), and then cut the neck portion that sticks out above the ribcage.
Using either a cleaver and mallet or a professional meat saw, I cut the backbone in half the rib rack and slice the saddle into tiny saddle chops, roughly one vertebrae each or 1/3 inch. Then I french the rack of ribs scraping with a knife.
I recommend tying the saddle chops back together for roasting with oiled cotton thread; this gives better temperature control. Attempting to take a cleaver or meat saw through a whole cooked saddle is a bit more problematical than tying back together a cut raw saddle, as I discovered early on in my gourmet rabbit-munching career.
At this point, you're ready for roasting. Brush the whole kit and caboodle with some lovely flavored oil, then roll in a mixture of powdered chanterelle mushrooms and crushed hazelnuts (porcini and pistachio works great on venison, BTW). Make sure exposed bone ends are covered with oil. I suggest roasting at moderately high temperatures for a fairly short time, say 400°F for 8 to 12 minutes. You want the meat thoroughly done (white), but not dry.
Take the remainder of the scraps—bones, flank, liver, heart, etc.—and boil them down for stock. Drain and shred the boiled meat, and for a serious treat, add some pine nuts and white truffles or white truffle oil to this rabbit pate. Use the stock for cooking down risotto, and serve with tiny baby artichoke heads or if you live in a compatible area, harvest, boil and serve the young heads of wild thistle.
This proceedure really doesn't take terribly long (maybe an hour to prep the bunny for cooking), and the end result is spectacular. Warning: do not use old, tough rabbits, which are best dredged in seasoned flour and simmered in sour cream and lemon juice under a blanket of good home-cured sugar bacon until tender. Pick young, tender Thumpers for roasting.
I once made a companion's eyeballs nearly drop out of their sockets with this presentation. What was even more startling is that I had begun with roadkill and weeds and ended up with a gourmet meal equivalent to what he'd been served in the finest French restaurants. We live in an area that is highly populated by very tasty wild rabbits, and one young (tender) and foolish bunny sacrificed itself to a car ahead of us, losing its skull but nothing else to an oncoming tire.
My religion doesn't allow for wasting fresh killed meat, so I bounced from the car and grabbed Mr. Bunny while my companion looked on in dismay. I whistled cheerily and commented, "Mmmm, just in time for dinner," as I sacked it up along with some edible wild thistles. Yep, the Wiccan religion has really only one dietary law, and that's it. Don't waste good food, especially if something died to make that food happen.
My companion eyed me dubiously as I dumped my bounty on the kitchen table and started to work. A few hours later, I had one nice rabbit hide and a dinner to make any gourmet sigh in ecstasy—beautifully presented salmis of rabbit with frenched rack and saddle served over risotto with white truffle rabbit pate and boiled new thistle buds with sweet butter. As I recall, the side salad involved fresh raspberries, spinach and blood oranges with a splash of aged balsamico.
Mmm. Quite an outcome from roadkill and weeds. Try it sometime—and you can even start with a store-bought Thumper instead if you like. ;)
Regards,
Tanith Tyrr
Bay Gourmet
"Scallops are expensive, so they should be treated with some class. But then, I suppose that every creature that gives his life for our table should be treated with class."
Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet
