Smoked Chukar White Lasagna

Jeff Davis | https://gundogcentral.com | All Hunting Articles
Posted 06/19/2021




We live on a small acre sized lot, in the middle of town, not a lot of room to have your own garden. It takes me about fifteen minutes to cut the grass. I wanted to plant my own garden, but I lived to far from the family's farm to do it there, so I built a small, raised bed garden in the backyard. It's three beds, roughly eight foot by ten foot each. In the beginning, I justified building it, thinking that I'd easily be able to get enough groceries out of it to justify the cost ... man was I wrong. Somehow, I keep finding new ways to put money into it. I have the lumber cost and all the dirt that I moved in to fill up the beds, plus I installed an irrigation system, so it'd self-water itself. I even installed a solar panel to charge some batteries to power a camera to take still images of the garden while it grows, so I could create a time-lapse video at the end of the growing season. Plus, I installed the world most boring live web cam, so I can remotely check the garden any time I wanted. I'll soon be adding temperature sensor for the air and soil, a humidity probe, and I plan to add a weather station to record rain fall amount and wind speed. To say that I've gotten carried away with my little garden project would be an understatement.

To get the most out of my garden year-round, I looked up what would be good a winter crop to plant in my area. Things like Onions, Radishes, Pleas, Carrots, Beets and Garlic were all listed, but the thing that popped up at the top of the list was Kale. I not a salad type of person, but let me tell you, I love some Kale. The reason I like Kale so much is probably because of this Zuppa Toscana Soup ( https://gundogcentral.com/recipes/3216/Zuppa-Toscana-with-Mushroom-and-Pheasant-Stock ), one of my all-time favorite meals. I could probably eat this every day of the week and not get sick of it!! So, seeing Kale at the top of the list, you can bet that's what I planted in my little garden. They weren't joking about it being a winter crop. The Kale I planted did awesome, we even had one of the coldest spells here in Tennessee in a long while. We had snow and ice on the ground for at least a week, if not longer, which is unusual. In fact, our heat even went out, and we had to run space heaters the entire week before we could get someone out to fix it. The little heaters struggled just to get our house even to sixty-degree. Somehow my little Kale plants managed to survive the freezing temperatures, but they didn't grow much during those winter months. With the arrival of spring however, these little kale plants took off!! It's now May and one might say I have a small Kale problem on my hands, it's literally growing faster than I can use it. I've been trying to find some new things to do with it, beside making soup or putting it on my burgers. What I came up with are a few recipes that I'm going to post to Gundog Central, starting with this Chukar and Kale White Lasagna, which turned out awesome by the way!

For this Chukar and Kale White Lasagna, I first smoked these little Chukar Partridge in my smoker until they reached the temperature I wanted. I then allowed them to cool, before I shredded the meat off the bone and used the smoked bird carcasses to make a Chukar Stock, I add some carrots, celery and onions that needed to be used before they went bad. If you don't have a smoker, you can cook the birds in the stock, while you make it, the stock just won't be as flavorful. Just season the birds as you normally would, add them to the bottom of a stock pot, add your vegetable, broken into large pieces, add any other seasoning you want, then fill with enough water to cover everything up. Cover the pot with a lid, then bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Allow the birds to cook at least 20 minutes, then remove one and check its temperature. If it's around 150 to 160, remove all the birds. Allow to cool, then shredded the meat from the bones, adding the carcasses back to the stock pot. I used this Chukar stock to create a cream sauce as a filling for the Lasagna layers. Hope you enjoy!
 


About the Author : Jeff Davis
Visit authors website | View more articles

You may think cooking and recipes don’t have much to do with a website dedicated to hunting dogs ... but really, why do we hunt? Sure, we enjoy watching our dogs work in the field and being outdoors, but ultimately, hunting is about survival and feeding our families. We might as well try to do it well. I'm not a chef and definitely no food authority ... but I do like to eat and enjoy cooking. After searching for people willing to share their recipes on Gundog Central, without much success, I decided to try to do a few on my own, with my wife Tami's help. The recipes I share here are things I like to eat and have made here at home. I've tried to include step-by-step instructions with each meal describing exactly how I did it, but my method may not be best, if you decide to try a recipe posted here, please use whatever technique you think works best, I'm simply sharing how I did it. You'll see a lot of recipes where I've tried to make things from starch, when I could have just used store bought ingredients, simply because I wanted to learn how something was done. My goal is to continually update these recipes as I learn new things and techniques. These are my attempts at creating good, home cooked food, that I would like to eat! If I'm sharing it here, my family and I enjoyed it and I believe you will too.

 
 

Tags

 

Related Aritlces

Pheasant Bolognese with Kale and Parmesan

Posted on Wednesday 31st December 1969 06:00:00 PM

If you read my last recipe post, the one about Smoked Chukar White Lasagna, you'll know that I've been blessed with an abundance of Kale in my little backyard garden this year. This Pheasant Bolognese with Kale and Parmesan recipe, is just another way that I found to deal my little Kale problem. This is just one of several recipes that I've made or have plans to make that will feature my backyard Kale. My little backyard garden is overrun with the stuff and it's growing faster than I can use it. While this recipe might have been posted as a way to deal with my Kale, it's really inspired by a Chicken Bolognese that my wife made a few months ago. She's a pasta freak, she absolutely loves it!! I think I've written about it before in another recipe post. Any way ... my wife made a Bolognese one night after work, she said she wanted to try something different, other than her regular, go to pasta dishes like Pasta Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe and Bucatini Allamatriciana. Let me tell you, it was freaking AMAZING!!! She knocked it out of the park when she made it! It was so freaking good ... I knew I wanted to try something like it for Gundog Central. You'll be disappointed to learn that the recipe I'm posting here, isn't a copy of her recipe!!

Continue Reading

 

Quail, Sage, and Mushroom Pizza

Posted on Wednesday 31st December 1969 06:00:00 PM

The wife and I do a fair amount of cooking at home, so it's not unusual that I'd get her something for the kitchen as a gift. Last Christmas, I got her a small outdoor pizza oven ... and we've been using the fire out of it. Coincidentally, she was working as a nurse at the time but now works for a local pizza shop. While she likes to cook the traditional Margherita Pizza, which consists of Mozzarella Cheese, Basil, Olive Oil, and Tomatoes, I want to experiment a little. The next few recipes I post will be a few of my experiments. I thought they all turned out pretty good, but this Quail, Sage, and Mushroom Pizza is my favorite. Not just my favorite from this batch of pizzas, but one of my all-time favorites.

Continue Reading

 

Leather Gloves : A Tool for bird hunters

Posted on Wednesday 31st December 1969 06:00:00 PM

With a profound swoosh of wings, the covey flew down the tree line. Most veered off to the left, disappearing through the foliage. Others settled down, close to or just beyond a tangled mess of brush. The dogs quickly retrieved two quail that had been shot from the initial flush. We found where the birds had crossed over, even scaring up singles while pushing through a lattice framework from a bristly plum thicket. After emerging, we carefully climbed over a rusty barbwire fence, then carefully passed a briar patch of thorns before finding more bobwhite quail. If it were not for our leather hand coverings, navigating the things that tried to cut scratch, tear, and poke us, would’ve been painful and annoying.

Continue Reading

 


Banner Ad