The Mountain Man Recipe Projects

HHMM needs a project.  The way I figure it, since this blog is about hunting, fishing, gardening, and food, I might as well make the project about all of those things at once.  Really, it will be a series of projects, with each one aimed at gathering, growing, or concocting one of the important ingredients, then writing a story about it.  How awesome will it be to sometime in the near future enjoy a meal flavored not only by the delicious meats, seasonings, and vegetables, but also by the tales of a day or days spent afield gathering those ingredients?

There are several cuisines that lend themselves well to a project such as this one.  The cuisines have to lend themselves well to wild versus domestic meats, or they have to regularly showcase such meats.  Cajun cuisine is perhaps the genre that first comes to mind.  I can't tell you how many times that I heard "well, you can cook it up in a gumbo" when the misfits of the game meat world - coot, squirrel, jackrabbit - were discussed.  If those misfits are accepted, even welcomed, in Cajun cuisine, then any game will be at home.

Gumbo is perhaps the most iconic of all Cajun dishes, and gumbo will be the my gastronomical muse for this adventure.  Sometime in the coming months, I will make an epic gumbo that will be rich, savory, spicy, and hearty (at least that is the plan).  In this gumbo, I will have crayfish, which I will harvest from my local waters.  The dish will also have andouille sausage, which I will mix, stuff, and smoke.  Perhaps if I am lucky, the sausage will be made from the meat of the bear I hope to harvest during this spring season.  The gumbo will have tomatoes, bell peppers, garlic, and onions, hopefully all of which will come from our garden this year.  Here is the recipe I plan to use (modified from the Creole Crab Gumbo in this book):

1/2 cup sliced onion*
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 pound wild game fish fillets*
1 pound cooked crayfish tails*
1 pound smoked andouille sausage*
1 pound okra, cut up*
5 cups canned tomatoes*
1 cup diced green pepper*
2 garlic cloves, crushed*
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
Black pepper to taste
2 cups brown game stock*

The starred ingredients above are ones I ought to be able to acquire or grow on my own.  The way I figure it, even if I fail to produce one of these ingredients on my own, and I have to resort to acquisition of foodstuffs from alternative sources, at least I will have a story.  I will publish each one of those stories as a blog post.  It should be fun...