Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (89 page)

Game is not usually considered a health food but it should be. The meat of game animals like deer, caribou, buffalo and elk, and of game birds like wild duck, goose, pheasant and quail is particularly rich in minerals and many other valuable nutrients.

One common misconception is that the fat from game animals is lower in saturated fat than fat from domesticated animals. Ruminant animals—whether domestic ruminants, such as cattle, goats and sheep, or wild ruminants, such as deer, caribou, buffalo and elk—contain special bacteria and protozoa in their intestinal tracts that do a very efficient job of turning largely unsaturated fats and carbohydrates from plant foods into saturated and monounsaturated fats. The amount of saturated fat in various ruminant animals varies only slightly, whether they consume grains or wild grasses. Buffalo fat is actually more saturated than beef fat! Only about 4% of the adipose fat of all ruminants is polyunsaturated. There may be slightly more omega-3 fatty acids in wild game compared to domestic beef, but the difference is too small to be of significance.

Another misconception is that game meat is lean and that primitive peoples therefore had a lowfat diet. Actually, the hunter-gatherer hunted animals selectively. He preferred older male animals because they had an accumulated slab of fat along the back which, in larger animals, could weigh as much as 40 or 50 pounds. He also consumed the marrow, which is rich in monounsaturated fats, and used the highly saturated cavity fat to make pemmican and similar preparations. (If you are a hunter, you should save this fat and use it in cooking.) Small animals like beaver were also a very rich source of fat for hunter-gatherers.

It is true, however, that most game meat is not marbled like beef and lamb and may, therefore, be very tough. This difficulty can be overcome with proper preparation and cooking. Game should "hang" or be aged for as long as possible in a cool, dry place to allow cathepsin, an enzyme naturally present in meat, to begin breaking down muscle fibers; and in most cases, game meat should be marinated for at least several hours, and as long as 48 hours, before it is cooked. If you take care in the preliminaries, your final dish will be flavorful and tender. You may also add cream or other fat to the sauce, to compensate for the leanness of the meat.

If you are lucky enough to have a hunter in your family, or if you have access to fresh game through a meat wholesaler or your local butcher, do take advantage of your good fortune and serve healthful game to your family as often as possible.

A note to hunters: If it is possible to save the organ meats of your deer, elk, etc., by all means do so. (They must be chilled down quickly.) The liver and kidneys may be prepared according to the recipes in our chapter on organ meats. Antlers and feet, cut up and added to your stock pot, will give you a very rich broth.

VENISON MEDALLIONS IN TANGY SAUCE

Serves 6

12 venison pieces from the loin or back leg, about 2-3 inches by 1-1½ inches

grated rind of 2 lemons

juice of two lemons

1 teaspoon dried green peppercorns, crushed

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup red wine or balsamic vinegar

1 cup red wine

2 tablespoons naturally sweetened blackberry or plum jam

2 cups
beef
or
venison stock

1 tablespoon gelatin (See
Sources
), optional

sea salt and pepper

Make a mixture of the lemon rind, lemon juice, peppercorns and thyme. Pound the venison pieces lightly with the small prong side of a meat hammer and marinate in the mixture for several hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.

Pat the pieces very dry with paper towels. In a heavy skillet, brown the medallions quickly in butter and olive oil, a few at a time, about 4 or 5 minutes per side. (The meat should be rare.) Transfer medallions to a heated platter and keep warm in the oven while making sauce.

Pour off the browning fat and add wine and vinegar to the pan. Bring to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to scrape up any accumulated juices in the pan. Add stock, optional gelatin and jam, bring to a boil and skim. Let sauce reduce until it thickens. Season to taste.

Serve with any
chestnut preparation
or with
Sauteed Asian Pears
(
Sauteed Apples
).

Whoever eats of this meat [venison] frequently is cleansed of slime and filth. Whoever is plagued by precanerosis (vicht) should eat often from its liver and it will devour the vicht in him.

St. Hildegard of Bingen

VENISON WITH GINGER SAUCE

Serves 6

12 venison pieces from the loin or back leg, about 2-3 inches by 1-1½ inches

juice of 3 limes

2 bunches cilantro, chopped

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1 teaspoon dried green peppercorns, crushed

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

½ dry white wine

3 cups
beef
or
venison stock

1 tablespoon gelatin (See
Sources
), optional

2 tablespoons naturally sweetened plum jam

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

sea salt and pepper

cilantro sprigs

Make a mixture of lime juice, grated ginger, cilantro and peppercorns. Pound the venison pieces lightly with the small prong side of a meat hammer and marinate in the mixture for several hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.

Pat the pieces very dry with paper towels. In a heavy skillet, brown the medallions very quickly in butter and olive oil, a few at a time, about 4 or 5 minutes per side. (The meat should be rare.) Transfer medallions to a heated platter and keep warm in the oven while making sauce.

Pour off the browning fat and add wine and stock. Bring to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to scrape off any accumulated juices in the pan. Add ginger, optional gelatin and jam, bring to a boil and skim. Let sauce reduce until it thickens. Season to taste. To serve, place two pieces of venison on each plate, spoon sauce over and decorate with cilantro sprigs.

Serve with
basic brown rice
or buckwheat or brown rice noodles.

The Eskimos, like the Homeric Greeks, prefer the flesh of older animals to that of calves, yearlings and two-year olds. . .. Homer is quoted to the effect that the Greeks preferred the meat of bulls five years old. It is approximately so with those northern forest Indians with whom I have hunted, and probably with all caribou-eaters. . .. Dr. R. M Anderson, who was naturalist and second in command of our 1908-1912 expedition, says: "The largest slab of back fat which I have seen taken from a caribou on the Arctic coast was from a bull killed near Langton Bay early in September, the fat weighing 39 pounds. A large bull killed by Mr. Stefansson on Dease River in October. . .must have weighed at least fifty pounds." Vilhjalmur Stefansson
The Fat of the Land

For centuries, uninformed and unskilled physicians would continue to relegate signs of sugar blues—the simple remedy for which they overlooked—to bewitchment. Three centuries of medical mischief would produce a veritable babel of Greek and Latin symptoma: Schizophrenia, paranoia, catatonia, dementia praecox, neuroses, psychoses, psychoneuroses, chronic urticaria, neurodermatitis, cephalalgia, hemicrania, paroxysmal tachycardia—all as scarifying as the devil himself. The wise people who understood what sugar blues were all about—the midwives, village herbalists and healers—had been driven underground. . .. Physicians and priests condemned natural healers at home as witches and consigned them to damnation. William Dufty
Sugar Blues

VENISON STROGANOFF

Serves 6

12 venison pieces from the loin or back leg, about 2-3 inches by 1-1½ inches

juice of 3 lemons

1 teaspoon green peppercorns, crushed

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 cup red wine

3 cups
beef
or
venison stock

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon paprika

1 cup
piima cream
or
creme fraiche

sea salt and pepper

Make a mixture of lemon juice and peppercorns. Pound the venison pieces lightly with the small prong side of a meat hammer and brush with the lemon juice mixture. Marinate in for several hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.

Pat the pieces very dry with paper towels. In a heavy skillet, cook the medallions very quickly in the butter and olive oil, a few at a time, about 4 or 5 minutes per side. (The meat should be rare.) Transfer medallions to a heated platter and keep warm in the oven while making sauce.

Pour off the browning fat and add wine and stock. Bring to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to scrape off any accumulated juices in the pan. Add tomato paste, paprika and cream, bring to a boil and skim. Let sauce reduce until it thickens. Season to taste. To serve, place two pieces of venison on each plate and spoon sauce over.

In the summer of 1933, [we made] contact with large bands of Indians who had come out of the Pelly mountain country to exchange their furs at the last outpost of the Hudson Bay Company. . .they have remained as nomadic wandering tribes following the moose and caribou herds in the necessary search to obtain foods.

The rigorous winters reach seventy degrees below zero. This precludes the possibility of maintaining dairy animals or growing seed cereals or fruits. The diet of these Indians is almost entirely limited to the wild animals of the chase. This made a study of them exceedingly important. The wisdom of these people regarding Nature's laws and their skill in adapting themselves to the rigorous climate and very limited variety of foods, and these often very hard to obtain, have developed a skill in the art of living comfortably with rugged Nature that has been approached by few other tribes in the world. The sense of honor among these tribes is so strong that practically all cabins, temporarily unoccupied due to the absence of the Indians on their hunting trip, were entirely unprotected by locks; and the valuables belonging to the Indians were left in plain sight. . .. The condition of the teeth, and the shape of the dental arches and the facial form, were superb. Indeed, in several groups examined not a single tooth was found that had ever been attacked by tooth decay. . .. Careful inquiry regarding the presence of arthritis was made in the more isolated groups. We neither saw nor heard of a case in the isolated groups. However, at the point of contact with the foods of modern civilization many cases were found including ten bed-ridden cripples in a series of about twenty Indian homes. Some other affections made their appearance here, particularly tuberculosis which was taking a very severe toll of the children who had been born at this center. . .. The suffering from tooth decay was tragic. There were no dentists, no doctors available within hundreds of miles to relieve suffering.