Here’s looking at you, 2022

I don't know what to expect from the coming year. COVID-19 has been like a vampire. Just when we think we've put it past us, a new variant emerges, dashing hopes life will settle back into pre-pandemic rhythms anytime soon (probably never).

So our new normal continues, at least at the start of 2022. Let's hope some things change, soon. Take precautions like masking. Get vaccinated. Don't follow medical advice from random sources on the internet. Sort out safe ways to play. There are plenty, and the outdoors is always a good place to start.

Enough about that. To start the year, let me get caught up on columns from December I haven't yet posted. Break's over.

New Year's resolutions for 2022. I'm not much of a resolution guy, but if I must ...

If You Could Only Have Just One The internet meme of forcing you to choose just one, as applied to upland birds.

Five great books for Christmas

Just in time for Christmas, I've finished the fifth and final installment of my "cookbooks for hunters and anglers series" with a look at "Salt Fat Acid Heat," by Samin Nosrat. There's no particular hunter/angler emphasis in this book, but Nosrat breaks down the four main elements of cooking in an easy, understandable way. If you're learning to cook, or even if you consider yourself an old hand in the kitchen, you'll learn a ton reading "Salt."

My favorite tidbit of "Salt" inspired insight: socarrat is the word for the crisp, brown rice crust that forms on the bottom of a pan of properly prepared paella. Though I haven't made paella in decades, I'm quite familiar with socarrat. I make a version of tomato rice a couple of times a month when I'm cooking Mexican/Tex-Mex grub. By accident I learned to create a socarrat crust in my tomato rice, though that's not the way it's normally served, and until I read this book, I didn't know that's what it is called. I make my rice crusty every time now.

By the way, I called these columns reviews, but I don't mean review in a clinical, break it down, chapter-by-chapter sense. These are more impressions rather than thorough critiques. The books were fun to read, though you don't really read cookbooks cover to cover (at least I don't). I'll be thumbing through these titles for as long as I'm cooking, leaving fatty thumbprints on all my favorite recipes.

“Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing,” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

“Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail: Upland Birds and Small Game from Field to Feast,” by Hank Shaw with photos by Holly Heyser

“The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game, Volume 1: Big Game,” by Steven Rinella

“Hook, Line, and Supper”: New Techniques and Master Recipes for Everything Caught in Lakes, Rivers and Streams, and at Sea," by Hank Shaw with photos by Holly Heyser

Cookbook review: Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail

Well, I promise I intended this as a cookbook review when I sat down to write it a few weeks ago. But reading it now, I have to wonder about myself. I suppose this is more a book about how the work of author and chef Hank Shaw has influenced my own culinary adventures, especially where wild game is concerned. “Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail: Upland Birds and Small Game from Field to Feast," has been a central guide as far as that journey is concerned.

In contemporary outdoors media, too often the act of eating game is completely divorce from the act of killing. To the degree I am able, I intend to fight that trend. Henceforth, there will be fewer tailgate shots, and more dinner prep shots in my social media activity.

This is the second of a five-part series of cookbook reviews I will write as Christmas gift suggestions. You can find a link to my review of Michael Ruhlman's "Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing," here.

The sourdough lifestyle

If you want to read my latest column on my new pandemic sourdough journey, click here.

I'm more of a hunter than gatherer. Archeologists and other smart people who study such things have concluded that in terms of calories provided, gatherers have always been more important than hunters. It's just that gatherers (usually women), went about their work of keeping the clan alive with little fanfare.

Hunters (men), on the other hand, have always made a big to do about the occasional mastodon they dispatched. Sure, it was a lot of meat, but most of it spoiled and three dudes were maimed in the process. It's the greens and tubers and occasional nest robbing of the women that kept hunter-gatherer society on the path toward world domination, rather than extinction.

Sourdough bread is more of a gatherer thing. Grain was gathered, and is now farmed. Sourdough fermentation is a by product of wild bacteria and yeasts that live on the grains, as well as the wind. The hunter in me was never too much interested in sourdough, beyond the pleasure of eating it. That changed in March when the COVID-19 pandemic forced all of us to isolate in place. Suddenly, nurturing a sourdough starter with it's daily feedings and kitchen temperature maintenance suddenly seemed feasible.

I'm all in now. This pandemic may have permanently ruined me for grocery store bread.

Pandemic survival skills: sourdough

The pandemic has turned me into a sourdough ... baker. I have extra time on my hands, but have been confronted by empty grocery store shelves — in the yeast section, at least. So a couple weeks ago I whipped up a batch of sourdough starter, and now I no longer needed commercial yeast. The wild stuff is starter was enough.

The internet makes starting hobbies less intimidating than the dark old days when we had to rely on things like the Encyclopedia Brittanica to figure stuff out. YouTube is a great resource fo how to stuff like this, and that's what I relied on to get my sourdough game on. So far I've cranked out four loaves of bread, and there's sourdough pizza dough proofing in the fridge. And my starter on the kitchen counter keeps belching out CO2.

Here are some links to help you brush up your pandemic sourdough survival skills:

I followed this recipe from Joshua Weissman to create my starter. He's a young foodie social media influencer. The recipe works well, using unbleached AP or bread flours mixed with equal parts rye.

I used this Weissman recipe to bake my bread. It's from an episode of Basics with Babish, a YouTube foodie channel that I think is quite good. The recipe is great, but the Weissman-Babish bromance can be a little much at times. It's all in good fun, however.

Here are some other useful sourdough resources.

Sarah C. Owens is a California-based baker and author of "Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More." I haven't read her book, yet. You can find her on YouTube baking sourdough bread here.

The Wild Life offers free online sourdough courses. I haven't taken one yet, but I plan to check it out.

Patrick Ryan is an Irish baker, and O'Day was my mom's maiden name, so I'm biased. His rye sourdough recipe on YouTube is on my schedule for next week.

How to make pozole — Mexican chicken soup for the soul

It’s time to give up on dining out, at least for a while, sheltering in place to help lower the curve of the coronavirus pandemic. We’re in for a few difficult months, but at least we’ll get to cook.

It’s still cool enough that it remains stew season, and stews are great for feeding groups of self isolating families. One of my favorite stews is pozole. I consider it a kind of Mexican chicken soup for the soul, and our souls can use all the therapy they can get right now.

Pozole has three meat components: Meat, spicy chili broth and hominy. 

The meat is simple. It’s traditionally pork, but chicken, turkey and beef all work in a pinch. And for you hunters, pozole is the perfect way to honor that last venison roast before freezer burn claims it as its own. You’ll probably need to augment the broth with some gelatin, however, to compensate for the lean meat.

You develop the broth with a long braise that renders the meat cut-with-a-spoon tender, along with the judicious use of chilies.

Hominy is just corn. Field corn actually, dried, then boiled in a lye solution. It’s a process called nixtamalization which breaks down the tough hull of the grain, and releases nutrients in the corn so they can be absorbed in our digestive system. Corn tortillas, masa and grits are all products of nixtamalization.

I generally use canned hominy, and it tastes fine. But if you can get your hands on dried hominy, especially dried blue corn hominy, it will have a more toothsome bite. But the dried stuff is an order-online product, and in these trying times I’m not going to add to our delivery system’s overwhelmed capacity. Necessities only.

I don’t really have a recipe for pozole as I prefer to wing it a bit. I do follow these general guidelines.

Start with a chunk of pig protein, about 4-5 pounds. The pork shoulder or Boston butt roast is best. The pork you see packaged as country style ribs actually comes off the butt, and I’ve had good results with it as well. But bone-in is important here. Marrow and the connective tissue of the butt roast (really the pig’s front shoulder) release collagen during the long braise, and collagen is key to a thick, rich broth.

Avoid loin cuts or chops. They’re great for grilling, but are too lean for this dish. A braise leaves these cuts dry and cottony, with little flavor.

Liberally salt the pork. Put some heat to a dutch oven, add oil and give the meat a nice sear. Don’t skimp on this step. Pork browned to a deep mahogany makes a fine pozole broth. Gray pig makes a thin, insipid broth. You don’t want that.

Take the meat out of the pot. If there’s a lot of fat left that’s a sign you picked the right piece of pig for the job. If there’s too much fat, pour some off and save it for a future culinary effort. Add a diced medium onion to the pot, along with a clove or two of crushed garlic. Turn the heat down and sweat the onion. At this point I add spices, which I’ve never measured so I’m really approximating here, but probably a tablespoon of cumin, a tablespoon of ground chili and maybe a half teaspoon of smoked paprika.

I loved the aroma of smoked paprika when it hits the heat, but don’t go crazy with it. Your pozole shouldn’t taste like barbecue.

A palm full of Mexican oregano wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Once the onion has wilted and you’ve given the spices a good toast, put the meat back in the dutch oven, add a couple bay leaves, and, if inclined, a can of beer, especially if there’s some Mexican lager about. But stay away from the strong stuff. This isn’t the place for a hoppy IPA (the proper place for a hoppy IPA is in your belly, in case you didn’t know). 

I usually use Dos Equis amber. Corona works too, though not as well.

I also like to add some good chili/enchilada sauce. El Pato is my favorite and worth tracking down. You can make your own sauce by toasting, hydrating and processing some good dried chilis, but El Pato is a worthy stand in. Don’t add too much, maybe 15 ounces or so, especially if you’ll be feeding folks who can’t take much heat. You can always add more later.

Then add water, but don’t fully cover the meat. Three quarters of the way is fine. Bring it to a boil on the stove, then put the pot it in a 300 degree oven for three or four hours. I start checking it after two and you’ll know its ready when the meat pulls loose from the bone.

Take the pot out of the oven. Pull the meat and let it cool. I like my pozole broth free of veggie bits, so I strain it at this point. But you could leave the onion in if you like. That’s just not how I do it.

Put the strained broth back in the pot. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add more El Pato if it needs heat. Shred the meat, leaving it a bit chunky, and put it back in the pot. Pour three 12-ounce cans of white hominy into a strainer and give the corn a good rinse, then add to the pot. Bring it back up to a simmer and cook for a half hour or so to take the sharp edge off any added chili sauce, and you’re ready to eat.

I like to garnish with cabbage, cilantro, radish slices and a squeeze of lime. Pickled jalapeños and avocado also have their devotees.

Ingredients

4-5 pounds bone-in Boston butt

Medium white onion

1-2 cloves garlic

Bay leaves

Ground cumin

Ground chili pepper (Pasilla or guajillo are good. Be careful with árbol, it packs a punch)

Smoked paprika

Mexican oregano

28 oz can El Pato chile sauce

3 12 oz cans white hominy

Garnishes of your choice – My fave is cold beer