In The Whole Beast, Nose to Tail Cooking, chef Fergus Henderson of London’s St. John Restaurant celebrates the consumption of as much of an animal as possible, including game birds.
“Woodcock defecate before they fly, so they can be roasted with the guts in, which heightens the flavor,” he says.
While not common in modern times, livers, kidneys, hearts, brains and various other internal stuff (collectively: entrails or offal) certainly are legitimate foods.
Chefs are known for their culinary hubris, and I was a little skeptical about Henderson’s grasp of the biology involved, so I asked around. Neither Judy Wilson nor Kelly Kubik, local wildlife biologists with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, would go out on a limb and confirm his thesis.
The furthest Wilson would go was, “I eat clams, so why not woodcock entrails?”
And as for me, if it tastes good and doesn’t kill me, I’m all for it. In older cookbooks, woodcock entrails are routinely utilized to add flavor and body to sauces, patés and stuffings.
Denne historien er fra Autumn 2020-utgaven av The Upland Almanac.
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Denne historien er fra Autumn 2020-utgaven av The Upland Almanac.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Tail feathers - STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
\"An armed society is a polite society,\" the NRA says in one of its dicta, cribbed from Robert A. Heinlein, a 20th-century American science fiction writer.
Day's End - IN PRAISE OF FENCEROWS
Driving north along the Hudson River, I gazed at a pastoral autumn scene: sere fields of faded yellow harvested corn, stubbly and broken amongst the clods of black earth, almost smooth from my vantage point. Spiky brown veins of wild growth marked barriers between plots. Occasionally, the gray bones of a mature oak rose among the brown shrubs to stand over the yellow fields. A sentry, keeping silent watch as white frost crystals slowly melted into invisibility.
That Time of Year Again
Without doubt. The most idyllic form of hunting in Ohio is seeking the woodcock. - Merrill Gilfallan, Moods of the Ohio Moons: An Outdoorsman's Almanac (1991)
I Don't Wanna'!
I'm an old hand at being retired, though - have been practicing for 25 years.
Hunting the Huns: Alberta's Big Sky Country
The prairies of southern Alberta are vast, beautiful and full of prime bird habitat. Crop fields are interspersed with abandoned farms, rolling hills are intersected by coulees and creek beds, and Hungarian partridge and sharptailed grouse occupy some of the best and most picturesque habitat on the continent.
Side Dish - End of Season
Sporting trips are not only about sport, as many other experiences are discovered alongside. And my trip to Lakewood Camps in Maine was certainly just that.
AN EXTENDED STAY
There is no reason to leave Michigan in the fall unless the opportunity of a cast and blast adventure at a historic sporting lodge in Maine comes calling.
KEEP IT HANDY
If you think shooting a ruffed grouse on the wing with a shotgun is tough, try shooting one in flight with a still camera.
A Longtime Love Affair
It's possible to hunt your favorite birds in a lot of different places, I suppose, but I don't do that.
Profile of an Artist: Harley Bartlett
Harley Bartlett was born in 1959 near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. However, having lived in Rhode Island for most of his life he considers himself a Rhode Islander.
