Cooking Unusual Game (Rabbits Beware!)
Written By: Alexandra Perez-Urbina on Mon, Sep 15th 2008
What is cooking? What do you think of when you find out that someone is in culinary school? What do you think this individual learns? The more common answers would be the mainstream type foods, pastas, steaks, chicken cacciatore, etc., right?
I just got through my first game and variety meats class, and I can already tell that it's going to be an interesting semester. "What are we going to make today?" is my initial thought. With underlying fear in my gut, I face this class with a bit of uncertainty. In a strange way, going to this class kind of like visiting the dentist. For example, I know that people eat rabbits, and I have nothing against people who eat them, but I have no intention of ever cooking cute, little bunny rabbits. In my book, the act is very much like cooking puppies - cute, little, fluffy puppies - you see, rabbits are my pets of choice (I have two, cute, little fuzz-balls), and I do hope the chef understands. I often wonder how vegetarians and vegans make it through school with so many meat classes - is it possible to be a vegetarian and go to culinary school? Probably not...
As far as variety meats go - I don't know. It won't be a class for the queasy or the faint of heart/stomach - with brain on the menu, anything could happen! Yes, brain and kidneys will be the first of the variety meats. Our class instructor was talking about how in one of the schools he taught at the students would receive the head of a calf and then go through the process of removing the brain - he described how to saw into the head and remove the brain. Then he got into the kidneys, soaking them to remove all of the urine, etc... I think I must have blanked out at one point because I really don't remember many of the details, but I shall share them with you, the curious reader, after we do the deeds.
Last week's class exposed us to "furred game" and we worked with venison and buffalo. Buffalo meat is very good, but can be a little difficult to work with as it is rather lean. There was a recipe that had a blueberry barbeque sauce - berries were actually a reocurring theme with the bigger, furred game. Many of the venison recipes included juniper berries, or a medley of berries in the sauce. The wines that accompanied the sauces were on the heavy side, too, either thick reds, or fortified wines (port and madeira). Strong flavors for strongly flavored meats... with buffalo and venison, especially venison, sweet and sour was the way to go.
For some strange reason, I made sausage two days in a row, though - buffalo sausage and pork sausage. There isn't much to sausage making, except temperature. Everything has to be kept cold - from the meat to the machine. At school, we use the kitchen aid machines with the attachments, and they are pretty easy to use (if anyone would like some help in figuring out how to do it all, please let me know). I learned that pieces of tendon and sinew are what I despise in most commercial sausages, and I may just end up making my own sausage mix sans the casing from now on. I love to season ground turkey with sausage and being able to make my own sausage stuffing gives me so much power - I can freeze the stuff and use as needed, which is grand! Mmmmmm... chorizo turkey sausage for my turkey chili! Thoughts like that make life worth living!
