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Pumpkin Pancakes with Candied Bacon and Fried Quail legs
I originally planned on posting a version of this recipe in October, two years ago, then again last year. I just haven't had the time to do so, hence the reason I'm now posting in January. I've made this several different times, each time just a little different. I love a big breakfast and this recipe makes a filling fall meal, with warm spice and lots of sugar! I served these Pumpkin Pancakes with a Maple Bourbon Butter, Spicy Candid Cacon and Fried Quail legs with a Tabasco Honey dipping sauce. You can garnish your pancakes with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries and top the whole thing off with a sprinkle of powdered sugar or black walnuts.
Holiday Cajun Smoked Turkey
This is my recipe for Holiday Cajun Smoked Turkey. I'm calling it a Holiday Turkey, I usually cook this every year, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, or any other time of year I can get a hold of cheap Turkey's. This recipe also works really well with Chicken, with a few adjustments. I like to buy Turkeys after Thanksgiving when they go on sale, so I can constantly have smoked Turkey in the refrigerator throughout the end of the year. To me, it doesn't get much better then left-over smoked turkey! I'll eat it cold, straight out of the refrigerator. Leftover turkey is pretty versatile, my wife and I recently took a Zoom cooking class online with the New Orleans Cooking School where we made Turkey Pot Pies, Turkey Gumbo with leftover Turkey. One of my all-time favorite meals, I could literally eat every day ... is to take leftover Turkey, shred it up and fry it in a hot skillet with butter. As it's frying, I sprinkle with the Cajun Seasoning, then when it's done, I serve it on a slice of bread, drizzling the whole thing the BBQ sauce, it's simple, quick and so good.
Pheasant Chilaquiles
I decided to do this meal because I needed to find something quick to do with some leftover pheasant meat that I had laid out. I didn't want it to go to waste and I didn't want to re-freeze it. Originally the kids had planned to come over to eat one evening, so I had laid out a bunch of extra meat. I wanted to make sure I had plenty to go around, but the kids ended up canceling at the last minute because they wanted to go out to eat with some friends. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare a meal but needed to use this meat, these Chilaquiles were perfect because they are quick and easy to prepare. I already had a bag of Corn Tostadas that needed to be used, some of dad's fresh farm eggs and a garden full of Jalapeno peppers that needed to be harvested.
Pheasant with Alfredo-Spinach Fettuccine
Here's a quick pheasant recipe that will have dinner ready on the table in 30 minutes.
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Bob White Kabobs with Red Bulgur Pilaf
In my last recipe post, I talked about the time my family was stationed in Turkey and my experience living off-base. Eventually, housing on the nearby Air Force base did become available and we were able to move. I remember how drastically different living on base was compared to living off base. As a little kid, it seemed like a completely different world. The base was like a desert oasis, I remember it being very tropical like, with a lot of green palm trees growing everywhere. There were tons of Iguanas that would lay out, basking in the sun, along the culverts and ditches that lined the streets and I remember there being a lot of Tree Fogs. Living on base, my parents would let us walk to school, I really don't remember if we even attended school during the time we lived off-base.
Pheasant Shawarma with Roasted Pepper Hummus
Being an Air Force brat, we lived a lot of different places where we got to experience a lot of different things. Of all the places we were stationed, the one place that stands out as the most unique was Turkey. This was way back in the 70's when Pan AM was still a major airline, and the cockpit doors were left open during the flight. I remember getting to meet the pilots, who gave me my very own pair of golden wings, albeit plastic ones, to pin to my shirt, it really made me feel like part of the crew. There wasn't any base housing available at the time, so we lived in some apartment buildings off base. The apartments were a single set of buildings out in a middle of a cotton field with nothing else around them. It felt barren and isolated. Off in the distance you could see a single mountain, who's peak was covered in snow all year round. Coming and going from the apartments, we'd see gypsies picking cotton from the surrounding fields. On a few occasions, a guy would come by the building, pulling a cart, he'd play music while a bear danced around in the parking lot and a monkey collected money with his hat. You would hear prayers being blasted over the air from a nearby Mosque during certain times of the day. We'd took a lot of road trips to go sight-seeing, I remember seeing temples carved into cliffsides in these deep ravines right off the side of the roads and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.
Tuscan Pheasant with Dried San Marzano Tomatoes
I have several recipes I've posted on here where I try to find uses for the produce that I grew in my little garden. This time, it's for the San Marzano Tomatoes I planted. I planted several types of tomatoes this year and had the same lucky with all of them ... bad luck. Last year, I had some awesome, huge Tomatoes plants, this year, I couldn't get them to do anything. The San Marzano tomatoes I planted were the only ones to product anything, but even they didn't do that great. I had five of these plants that I put out, they all grew and survive, but only produced a handful of tomatoes. My wife buys a lot of canned San Marzano tomatoes, so I thought it'd be a good idea to try to grow some of our own. I didn't get many, just a few handfuls, all of which quickly got used in the Italian dishes my wife loves to cook.
Quail, Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
I was never much of a soup person growing up, you couldn't pay me to eat it, it didn't matter what kind of soup it was. Fast forward 40 years and my how things have changed. I discovered Potato Soup several years ago, specifically, Zuppa Toscana soup from the Olive Garden. It's absolutely my favorite soup hands down! If you look through the recipes on this site, you'll see that I have two different version of that soup where I tried to recreate it at home with Pheasant. Give me a bowl of Potato soup and some bread, then just let me go to town!! Discovering Zuppa Toscana led me to trying different types of soup, like Loaded Potato Soup, Tomato Soup & Tortilla Soup, which my wife is in the kitchen making right now as I write this... now I love them all. Well, most of them any ways, there are still some soups that I wouldn't dare try, like Vegetable soup or Minestrone, I'm just not ready to try an all-vegetable based soup. When I told my wife I wanted to try to do a Mushroom and Rice soup, she turned her nose up at me and said she didn't think she'd like soup with rice in it. I guess we can all be kind of particular about our soups. Needless to say, I made the soup any way and she actually liked it!
Quail Saltimbocca
I have this herb garden in my backyard that's overrun with beautiful Basil. In the middle of it are these two lonely, but healthy sage plants. I was looking from something I could do with that sage and decided on making a Saltimbocca. If you're not familiar with a Saltimbocca, it's thin meat, generally veal, that's rolled up with Prosciutto and Sage, lightly fried then cooked in a pan sauce of white wine and butter. In my last recipe post, I made a Pheasant Saltimbocca, and it was delicious, but after finishing that recipe, there were still some things I wanted to try with it, so I decided to attempt a quail version of it. A classic southern recipe is Quail wrapped in bacon, and since Prosciuttos is a cousin to Bacon, I thought the pair would be great together in this recipe. Fruits generally also pairs well with Quail, so I added some sliced peaches and cook them with my wine sauce, then topped it off with some Mozzarella cheese! It turned out great, I just wish my Quail had been a little meatier.
Pheasant Saltimbocca with Basil Pesto Gnocchi
I have a little herb garden that sits under a window in the backyard, it's roughly 2 feet by 4 feet. I was hesitant about putting it in the backyard because it doesn't get a lot of sun. The trees block the morning sun, and the house blocks the afternoon sun, allowing it to only get direct sunlight in the middle of the afternoon. We planted Basil in it last year, with no expectation that it would grow, but it did, and it flourished! We had more Basil than we knew what to do with. We made lots of Pesto, then my wife preserved what she could with Salt and Olive oil in mason jars. This year we decided to try planting it with a few other herbs, Thyme, Oregano, Rosemary, Sage, and Parsley, along with more Basil. The Basil came up strong and took over, we have these big, healthy looking Basil plants and very little of anything else. I do however have these two lonely sage plants, towering out of a sea of Basil. Everything else we planted in this herb garden, showed up briefly, then disappeared. I don't know if we didn't water it enough, or it the Basil just choked everything else out.
Butter Pheasant
Butter chicken, or murgh makhani, is an Indian-English dish that is known around the world. This is my recipe made with pheasant. The tomato gravy is the star here, a creamy, rich and vibrant sauce that complements light game meats well.
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Blackened Pheasant Jambalaya
Having lived in Shreveport Louisiana for several years, I developed a taste for Cajun cuisine. Granted Shreveport is about as northern as you can get in Louisiana, still a good piece away from New Orleans and any real Cajun country. Shreveport may not be in the heart of Cajun country, but they, still found ways to celebrate Cajun heritage. They have their own version of Mardi Gras and a Crawfish festival, called Mudbug Madness. I didn't much care for Louisiana while I lived there, but now I look forward to going back when I get the chance. In fact, we'll often travel back to Louisiana around the end of May just to attend Mudbug Madness festival they host each year. During this event, downtown Shreveport is packed with people, food vendors and bands. You can find all sorts of Cajun cuisine served by various food vendors that line the streets all the while listening to Creole bands play their music from different stages. Of course you'll find tons of Crawfish being served along with corn, potatoes and sausage, but you'll also find Red Beans and Rice, Gumbo, Boudin, Alligator on a stick, Etouffee, Dirty Rice, Pralines, Beignets and Jambalaya. It's a cornucopia of Cajun cuisine and I love them all!
Blackend Bricked Pheasant
I'm a sucker for Cajun Food, but if I had a favorite Cajun cooking technique, it'd be Blackened food! While not a traditional creole cooking method, it did originate in New Orleans. Give me some Blackened fish any day of the week and you'll see a happy man! That being said, I wanted to do a Blackened Bird recipe to post on Gundog Central. Blackening is a method of cooking where you cover fish, chicken or some other protein with butter then generously coat with spices and herbs, finally it's placed on a hot skillet where the butter and spices form a black crust, and while it looks like burnt food, it's not the same thing. This recipe would be great by itself, or served with some rice or cheesy grits, but I'm making this Blackened Bricked Pheasant to use in another recipe, a Blacked Pheasant Jambalaya that I'll be posting later!
Pheasant Coq Au Vin
I keep a list of meals I want to attempt for Gundog Central and that list seems to constantly get longer and longer. This Coq Au Vin has been on there for a very long time, I've struggled with how I wanted to make it. Not that I didn't know how to make it, I've made before, at home with my wife multiply times. It's a lot like making Beef Bourguignon, which has a very similar process. I just hadn't tried to make it with any wild game before. I thought about this a long time, even jotted down ideas in a notebook about different things I might try. This is something that I knew I wanted to make, but just wasn't sure how I wanted to go about it. This is actually one of the first recipes I wanted to post on Gundog Central, I was just conflicted and my indecision kept letting me put it off.
Arroz Con El Faisan
After a long day at work, you don't always feel like coming home to cook food. Sometimes is just easier, and more relaxing to just jump in the car and drive down to one of the local Mexican restaurants for some good food and few margaritas! Me and my wife each have our regular meals that we get there, my two favorite go-to meals are the El Preferido and Tacos De Alambre. The El Preferido, is strips of chicken breast, covered with cheese sauce, to which I usually have them add Chorizo and Cilantro. I tried to create my own version of this at home several months ago, you can find it listed with my other recipes, as "Mi Favorito". I must say, it turned out pretty damn good and the longer it sat, the better it got, one of my favorite meals, hence the title. This recipe is going to be very similar, with a lot of the same ingredients. I got off work a little early one Monday and since it would be a while before my wife got home, I decided I'd just cook dinner for the both of us. I didn't want to spend all night cooking and I didn't want to dirty up a lot of dishes that I'd just have to clean up later, so this one skillet, Arroz Con El Faisan, seemed like a really good choice. Arroz Con El Faisan, basically just means rice with pheasant.
Pheasant Fricassee with Dried Kale Flakes
If youve kept up with the last few recipes Ive posted, youll know that Ive been trying to come up with a few recipes to deal with my self-inflicted, backyard Kale problem. It has been out of control and overgrown in my little raised garden beds, growing faster than I could use it. The summer heat has stifled its growth some and the bugs have pretty much destroyed whats left, it looks like someone shot the leaves up with a shotgun, there are so many holes them. Ive sprayed and sprayed insecticide, trying to kill the bugs, but they still seem to have the upper hand. So, this will be the last Kale recipe that Ill be posting for a while. It may even be debatable that this recipe be considered a Kale recipe. What I did for this recipe, was to dehydrate my kale, with a little olive oil and salt, then crushed it to use like a kale pepper garnish, to sprinkle over the top of this Pheasant Fricassee, just finish it up after cooking. This dehydrated Kale was so good though, I was literally eating it by the spoonful, straight out of the bag I crushed it in.
Sweet and Sour Fried Dove
These crispy-fried whole doves are like wild game KFC. Serve them as an appetizer or, if you end up shooting a lot of birds, offer a whole plateful for a meal. Assuming that the birds dont have new feathers coming in, they should be fairly simple to pluck and gut. You can skin doves, but that little bit of fat makes a big difference in flavor.
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Zuppa Toscana with Pheasant
This Zuppa Toscana is another recipe I'm posting to deal with my garden Kale. I planted a bunch of it this winter in my flower bed and it took over as the temperature started to rise this spring. I've been posting several recipes as I find new ways to deal with my surplus Kale. I already have a Zuppa Toscana soup that posted on the site last year, but I've been wanted to do a slightly different version of it for some time. I'll just call this Zuppa Toscana version 2. With the Zuppa Toscana version 1 recipe, I used Italian Sausage and a few cups of Mushroom Stock, mixed with Pheasant stock. Since Pheasant Stock was the only real gamebird ingredient that I used in the recipe, I felt like I needed to do a new version that featured more pheasant. Inside of using Italian Sausage in this version, I'm using ground Pheasant, seasoned with Italian Seasoning and 6 cups of Pheasant Stock, no mushrooms this time.
Pheasant Bolognese with Kale and Parmesan
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!!
Smoked Chukar White Lasagna
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.
Chukar Stock
Ive had a few Chukar recipes on the site where I needed to make a stock as part of the process. I wasn't willing to substitute chicken stock or pheasant stock in my recipes that featured Chukar, but there is no reason I couldn't have. For those recipes, I wanted to amp up the Chukar flavor, and part of my plan was to just do a quick stock while cooking the birds. This was done to save time, kind of killing two birds with one stone. The problem with doing it that way, is that the stock I ended up with was paler in color than what I would have liked, and the flavors weren't as bold ... it was still good and worked for what I wanted, but I knew I could do better. When I came up with the idea for doing another Chukar recipe for the site, a Chukar Lasagna, I knew I wanted to up my Chukar Stock game as well. So, I set out to cook my birds beforehand this time, all I had to decide was how I wanted to do that. A few years ago, for Fathers Day, my wife and kids got me a Smoker. I absolutely love it! I could spend all day just sitting on the back porch watching smoke roll out of it and smelling the food cook. I love smoking Turkeys, Chickens, Ribs, Salmon, Sweet Potatoes, really anything else I can get my hands on. So, it wasn't much of a decision when I decided to smoke these little Chukars before making this stock, but there's no reason I couldn't have roast them or even grill them.
Goose Breast with Rosemary Fig Sauce
Pan-seared duck or goose breast is simple, quick and classic, and hunters who are used to throwing away the skin on their waterfowl should rethink this habit. A goose or ducks skin is the best part of the animal.
Drunken BBQ Pheasant with Apple Slaw
I recently had a good friend commit suicide and I'm still in disbelief. It's hard to understand why someone would make that choice. They always seemed to be a positive person, in fact, I remember anytime you said something negative, their automatic response would be ... Not with that attitude! It's been a while since I had talked to them, I knew they had some issues with depression, but I didn't think they'd take their own life.
Mi Favorito
I'm not sure what Tennessee has more of, BBQ Joints or Mexican Restaurants. I know that small town we live in, has no shortage of either. Since Tami doesn't like BBQ, we'll most often eat out at one of the local Mexican Restaurants. The kids would always get a dish called El Preferido or El Favorito, depending on which restaurant we went to, it basically just means the preferred or favorite meal. It's Grilled Chicken covered with cheese sauce, served with rice and beans. Eventually, Tami and I started ordering it too, mainly because we were in a hurry one night and wanted to simplify our order. We had requested that they add some Chorizo and Cilantro to ours. This quickly became one of our favorites. Now any time we go out to eat or order lunch, it's almost guaranteed that one of us order this dish. This is my effort to recreate this at home with Pheasant.
Dan Dan Pheasant Noodles
My morning routine usually involves a hot cup of coffee and me trying to clear the sleep out of my eyes enough to be able to read the morning news. On one particular morning, I was drinking my coffee and scrolling through the news on my phone when I saw a recipe for Dan-Dan Noodles. I'm not really a big Asian food, but when I saw the picture I knew immediately that I wanted to make something similar to it. I spent the rest of my day trying to figure out how I could do this with the ingredients I had at home. This version isn't going to be authentic, I'm not using any pork or Sichuan peppers, but it still turned out pretty good.
Savory Quail and Wild Rice Casserole
Looking for something new and healthy to do with your Quail, that doesn't involve wrapping them in bacon or deep frying them? Admittedly, I do love bacon and southern fried Quail is one of my all time favorites, but I already eat too much of that stuff. This recipe was actually inspired by leftovers and pantry item we had at home and not because I needed to find less fried food to eat. I'd purchased some mushrooms and peppers for another recipe and didn't use them all. I didn't want them to go to waste or let them go bad, so I wanted to find something to do with them. This is one of the recipes I came up with. It's Quail and Wild Rice Casserole.
Sharp-tailed Grouse Katsu
While chicken is the most commonly used protein in Japanese katsu, you can pretty much coat and fry any kind of tender meat in Panko breadcrumbs. Panko fries up quickly and stays crispy longer than most other breading and batter combinations I've tried.
Hungarian Pheasant Paprikash with Nokedli
I had some left-over ingredients from another recipe I did and didn't want them to go to waste. I was trying to come up with a couple recipes I could do where I might make use of those ingredients. What I came up with this this Hungarian Pheasant Paprikash and a Savory Quail and Wild Rice Casserole that I'll post another day. To be perfectly honest, I didn't even know what Paprikash was until I saw the movie Captain America: Civil War. In the movie they mention making Paprikask, after the theater, I told my wife that we had to try to make it. We have now made it a few times since and it's always delicious. The version I made here looks a little muted in color, I added a little too much Sour Cream at the end and dulled the red paprika color. I might not have gotten the color I wanted, but it was still packed full of favor.
Jalapeno Duck Popper Casserole
Everyone seems to have their own version of a Jalapeno Popper recipe that they like to use, I thought I'd add a little twist to this version by doing it as a Casserole. This isn't an original ideal of mine, you can find hundreds of popper casseroles recipes all over the internet, this is just my take on one. Not only was this recipe delicious, but it was quick and easy!! As long as you don't count the time it took to cook the duck breast. I know a casserole is supposed to be a one pot dish, but if you add the duck breast to a slow cooker before leaving for work in the morning or at lunch time, they'll be done by the time you get home from work. At that point you can just shred the meat and start assembling this casserole. I have to be honest, I ate half of this by myself, it was so good! We had just enough left to snack on the next day, but it only left me wanting more. We will definitely be making this again.
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Smoked Pheasant Tortilla Soup
A few of our kids were in the High School Marching Band for several years, so we traveled around a lot to watch them perform. If you have ever been to a high school marching band competition, you know these things last ALL DAY LONG, sometimes we wouldn't get home until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. My wife wanted to get more involved with the program, so she volunteered us to cook for the kids. She wanted to ensure they could have a good, hot meal after their performance. Coupled with a few other parents, we'd hauled our grills, fryers and propane tanks, plus coolers and coolers of food and drinks to all these different high schools where the kids performed. We'd spend most of our time setting up and cooking, so we'd miss some of the kid's performances, it was a sort of double-edged sword being as it was one of the boy's senior year. I swear we made a of version of this tortilla soup for the band kids that year, however the wife is telling me I'm wrong, which nothing new, but that we actually made this for a fund raiser for one of our co-workers. Regardless of who is right or wrong, this soup is always amazing and it's the perfect meal for those cold, windy, wintery days. We've actually made this several times at home for ourselves and will eat on it for days and days. It's one of those meals that just seems to get better and better the longer it sits in the refrigerator.
Partridge Shepards Pie
I'm not a big movie star fan, I couldn't tell you who plays in what, my wife and her family on the other hand ... they know their movies! They can tell you the person's name and all the other movies that person has ever been in, plus the year it was released. You literally can't watch a show or movie without them pausing it ten times to talk about the actors playing in it.
Roasted Red Grouse with Blackberry Bramble Wine Sauce and Mashed Parsnips with Shaved Truffles
Growing up, I was a big James Bond fan. All the cool gadgets, the fast, sleek cars and the beautiful Bond girls ... what wasn't to like for a young adolescent boy? My favorite Bond? Nobody did it better than Sean Connery. Ive been wanting to do a British type meal for a while, so when I heard that he had passed away, I knew I wanted to do a meal to honor him and those childhood memories of mine.
BBQ Pheasant Pizza
A wild game twist on a classic - BBQ pheasant pizza is a delicious substitution for BBQ chicken pizza. Use your favorite homemade pizza dough recipe or buy it already made at the store.
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Partridge in a Pear Tree Pot Pies
In the last recipe I posted, I paid tribute to my Mom's cooking with a version of her old fashion dumpling soup. Here's another classic dish I remember her making from my childhood, Pot Pies. Mom's pot pies were good, but they could have been better if she had just left out those English Peas! Being as I'm not a Pea fan, I decided the only Peas you'll find in this recipe, are in the title, I'm calling this Partridge in a Pear Tree Pot Pies. I was toying around with ideas for a Christmas themed meal and this is what I came up with. The recipe is based on the 12 days of Christmas song. If you're like me, you're probably wondering why a Partridge in a Pear Tree?? I thought Partridges spent most of their time on the ground. Supposedly, the song originated in France and a few of the words were mistranslated to English, with one of the words for Partridge sounding a lot like Pear Tree.
Roasted Curried Chukar
Chukar can dry out easily, so the trick is to brine it beforehand - a technique that I highly recommend when cooking game birds. Not only does it add extra flavor to the meat, it also helps to keep it moist. The brining may take 4-6 hours, but its little work. Cooking the dish will only take you 35 minutes. If you have a chance to hunt for chukar, I hope you give this a try!
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Partridge with Old Fashioned Dumplings
If the last recipe I posted was a tribute to my Grandmother's cooking, then this one is a tribute to my own Mothers cooking. I remember Mom making us eat lots horrible stuff growing up ... stuff like beats, peas and green beans ... and we weren't allowed to get up until our plate was clean. I hated peas and still do ... a lot of times I'd end up just hiding my peas around the house, in a window seal or under a place mat, needless to say ... I got in trouble a lot. My parents had bought an expensive dining room set when they were stationed in Germany. The table was wooden, with a dark stain, I remember the fancy, decorative cravings it had. The chairs were also made of wood, with a green felt like material over the seats that was fastened to the chair with hammered metal push pins. Underneath the chairs, were drilled holes, so the foam in the seats could breathe and compress when you sat in it. Those holes ... . were just big enough to fit peas in. I liked to sit in different chairs on nights we had peas, ones I knew weren't already stuffed with old peas.
Southern Smothered Quail on Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits with Fried Quail Eggs
Growing up in the Air Force, we moved around a lot. Never in any one place more than a few years. Needless to say, none of those places ever felt like home. The only place that did, was my Grandparents house in Tennessee. As a kid, we'd always came back to Tennessee for vacation. My Grandparents owned a large farm with lots of acreage for a young kid to explore. My parents would just turn me lose on the farm, armed with my Red Rider BB gun and I'd be gone all day. My Grandmother would be sure to remind me not to kill her blue birds. I remember being startled to death more than a few times, by coveys of quail taking flight as I spooked them from their hiding place, usually on a fence line. It's too bad you don't see birds like that in Tennessee that much anymore, at least not around here.
Japanese Inspired Pan Seared Duck Breast
I've been taking Karate for 4 or 5 years now, something I always wanted to do it as a little kid, but never got the chance to ... only now I'm 50. Who wasn't fascinated by Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris fighting it out in "Way of the Dragon". Truthfully, I really only started taking karate to get exercise, after all I do sit behind a computer most of my days. I got tired of going to the gym, and trying to motivate myself to work out, especially in front of strangers ... that got old pretty quick. I figured I just needed to go somewhere where they could tell me what to do and me do it. I thought I'd just go to a few classes, see if I liked it, I never really thought I'd stay in it as long as I have. I didn't join to get belts or ranks, or even to learn how to fight, but one of the perks is you learning something new about another culture. Part of the class is learning some history, along with Japanese words and phrases, although most of them are related to fighting.
Southwestern Chipotle Pheasant Burrito with Black Bean and Corn Salsa
Tami and I recently went to a local restaurant to eat after a doctor's appointment. One of the things on the menu was Southwestern Chicken with Sweet Potato fries. It seemed appealing to me, so I ordered it. It was SO good!! It occurred to me that I had most of the stuff to make this in the pantry at home, so I thought I'd try to create my own version of it. At the restaurant, the chicken was served on a plate with a black bean and corn salsa over top of the chicken. I decided to do something a little different, by using Pheasant and wrapping it up in a flour tortilla with some rice to make a burrito.
Parmesan Pasta with Pheasant Meatballs
My wife loves pasta!! If it was up to her, we'd eat it every night of the week. Needless to say, we have it for dinner more nights than not. If she got her way, we'd eat the same three pasta dishes every week ... Pasta Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe, Bucatini All'amatriciana. All three are classic Italian dishes ... She's got good taste. Of course, we'll have some of our other favorites, like Spaghetti, Penne Pasta with Pesto and Farfalle with Vodka Sauce. Now, I'm not complaining about the pasta, I get feed really well, but I've been thinking about doing something different for a while. I've actually changed my mind on this recipe several times, including on the day I finally decided to make it. We've been growing our own Tomatoes and Basil all summer, I had been wanting to do my own Spaghetti recipe using the things we grew in the backyard, but somehow that project morphed into this Parmesan Pasta dish with Pheasant Meatballs.
Oktoberfest Pheasant Bratwurst and Sauerkraut
We recently saw our son off to join the Air Force and we couldn't be more proud. We know that the Air Force will provide him with the skills he needs to be successfully and accomplish whatever he wants to do in life. While also allowing him to travel the world and experience things most people never get the opportunity to do. My father is also a retired Air Force officer and according to him, I'm still an Air Force brat. I remember going to all the air shows as a little kid, walking the runways looking at planes and climbing up in the cockpits. My favorite was watching the Air Force Thunderbirds perform and watching the SR-71 Blackbird fly. To this day, I still drag my wife around to any Air Shows that are within driving distance, just to see those planes fly. I've always been a big fan of the Air Force, but after moving around our whole lives, I wasn't ready to enlist. We were stationed in ... California, Louisiana, Missouri, Michigan, Virginia, plus overseas in Turkey and Germany. In fact, Germany is where I was born. That was my very first experience with the Air Force and since it's currently Oktoberfest ( Sept 16th to Oct 3rd ), I thought this meal would be a good way to commemorate my step sons enlistment. You were probably starting to wonder what the Air Force had to do with Bratwurst!!
Duck with Cream and Herbs
Featured recipe of the month. Duck with Cream and Herbs by Food for Hunters by Jenny and Rick Wheatley.
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Caprese Pheasant Sliders
Twenty-twenty definitely wasn't the year for a normal summer, with Coronavirus restricting travel, leisure time and family gatherings ... we basically spent the summer in quarantine. Going to work, then coming home with nowhere to go and nothing to do. We had to find ways to entertain ourselves. Tami and I spent a lot of time cooking and tending to our small garden, but with summer winding down, some of our cooking will have to move from outside to inside. One of the more popular meals we cooked this summer, that the kids absolutely loved, where these Turkey and Chorizo sliders on Brioche buns. I wanted to do this meal as a homage to how we spent our summer, a kind of farewell to summer meal, so another sliders seemed like the perfect choice.
Buffalo Pheasant Sandwich
As a long time Tennessee Titans season ticket member, we'll be spending our weekends at home this year watching the games ... thanks coronavirus! We're excited about our team and ready for the NFL kickoff, despite all the controversy surrounding the league this year. We think we have a decent shot at making the playoffs. Since we'll be spending all these games at home, I thought I'd share one of our favorite game day meals. This is quick, easy and cheap!! If you have a crockpot, you're good to go. We make this at my house ALL THE TIME, although we usually make it with Chicken Breast, but we decided to try it with Pheasant breast ... it's so good! This recipe doesn't need you to babysit it, just toss everything in and leave it alone. You really only need three ingredients, breast meat, buffalo sauce and dry ranch seasoning ... and maybe some type of bread to put it on. We usually eat ours on Steak Rolls, Hoagie buns, Hamburger buns or Ciabatta Rolls. Skin your breast meat and place it in the bottom of your crockpot, cover it completely with buffalo sauce then sprinkle in a packet of ranch seasoning. Set the heat on high and cook for one and a half to two hours, or if you're not in a hurry, you can set it to low and cook for about 3 ½ to 4 hours. When it's done cooking, just shred the meat with a fork, toss it back into the crock pot to combine and completely coat the meat in the buffalo sauce ... then just dream about how you want to top your sandwich. The kids like to eat theirs plain or with ranch seasoning, but I like to melt Mozzarella cheese on mine and top with Celery leaves. My wife prefers to cover hers in blue cheese and cut up pieces of celery stalk. Anyway, you do it, this Buffalo Pheasant Sandwich is going to be hot!!! It's a great fall meal to can make and enjoying while watching the football games. TITAN UP!!
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Pheasant Noodle Soup
With the Coronavirus pandemic ongoing and the flu season fast approaching in the United States, I thought I'd try to post a recipe that's a classic folk remedy all around the world. When I was dating my wife, Tami, who just so happens to be a nurse ... she would brag about how she never got sick. Wouldn't you know it ... A few weeks later, she was sporting a temperature and couldn't get out of bed. One night, on the way to her house, I stopped at the local Walmart and purchased everything I needed to make some good old fashion homemade Chicken Noodle Soup. I made a huge batch that she'd be able to eat on for days, hoping that it'd help her feel a little better. To this day, she still talks about that soup! I don't know if it was that good or if the virus she had just made her that delirious. Anyway, this is my attempt to recreate that recipe with Pheasant and some homemade vegetable broth.
Jamaican Jerk Pheasant Tacos with Scotch Bonnet Aioli
Since Coronavirus has us in lock down with no vacation in sight ... we figured we'd try bring an island vacation to our own backyard this weekend with these Jamaican Jerk Pheasant Tacos with a Scotch Bonnet Aioli! We brined the Pheasant with Salt, Ginger Beer, Dark Rum, All Spice Berries and dried Pimento leaves and then smoked it over real Pimento wood imported from Jamaica! Tacos are served with Coat of Arms ( Jamaican Rice and Beans ), homemade Corn Tortillas, Papaya Salad, Fried Plantains and Grilled Pineapple Spears and Corn on the Cob with Chipotle Butter. We washed all this down with a Dark and Stormy drink, Spiced Rum and Ginger Beer.
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Cast Iron Quail with Apple Dressing and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes
Anyone ever watched Game of Thrones on HBO? It's a medieval type show about Kings, Dragons and treachery for the throne and rule of the kingdom. The TV series is based on a series of books called the "Song of Fire and Ice" by author George R R Martin. I had already read all the books, at least the ones that have been published to date, long before this show aired and loved them. I was excited to see they were doing a show for it and I'm not really one to get too engrossed in TV shows. Other than the last couple of seasons being a disappointment, I'd still recommend it to anyone. I had read all of J R R Tolkien's books, the Hobbit, then the Lord of the Rings in middle school as a kid ... . Those are my favorite books of all time and they really cemented my interest in reading books in this fantasy setting.
Saviory Quail Meat Pie
Tami and I have been cooking quite a bit during the Coronavirus quarantine, you'd think with everything shut down that I'd be able to catch up on projects ... but am as far behind as ever. Take this meal we prepared back in March for PI day that I'm just now getting around to posting. Sometimes, we'll will cook themed meals for TV Shows such as Game of Thrones, NFL playoffs and other various things. The day before, while driving home from Walmart, she asked me what I wanted to cook for PI day. March 14th or 3/14, is known as Pi day around the world, for the mathematical constant 3.14 blah blah blah. I was all like, "I don't want to cooking anything", to which she replied, "But last year we made homemade Chicken Pot Pies and a Blackberry Pie", all while making a sad face, like she was disappointed that I didn't want to do anything this year. Finally, I said, "FINE! If I'm going to have to make a pie again this year, I want to do meat pie, but not any meat pie, but the one from that nursery rhyme where the birds fly out of it." The rhyme is called the "Song of Sixpence" and it went something like "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and Twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened the birds began to sing, wasn't that a dainty dish, to set before a king?". She finally agreed that we could try to make my bird meat pie, so we brainstormed ideas in the car as we headed back to the grocery store to pick up more supplies. This is what we came up with ... This Roasted Quail Meat Pie with a Savory New Potato & Mushroom Stuffing and an "Out of this World" Blackberry Pie. After we sat down to eat, I asked Tami what she thought about the meat pies, on scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best. She said definitely a 10! I'd take that with a grain of salt, since she's my wife and probably feels obligated to say such things. However, I did catch her eating the leftovers for breakfast this morning, they couldn't have been that bad, right? Our birds may not have sung after, but our bellies and mouths sure did!! #NationalPiDay #EinsteinsBirthday #Piday #MeatPie #QuailPie #BlackberryPie #OutofthisWorld #GundogCentral #gamebirds #hunting #birdhunting
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Duck and Morel Thin Crust Pilsner Pizza
A popular dish around my house are these handmade pizza's that my wife Tami makes. She'll make her own dough, and usually has plenty of it saved in the freezer, ready to go on demand. One Halloween, all the kids came over for a pumpkin designing, personal pizza making party. The kids each got to design their own pumpkins and create their own personal pizzas with any toppings they wanted. I created mine to look like a pumpkin patch with cheese covered with Arugula leaves and small Habanero's, that resembled pumpkins. Although mine wasn't exactly edible, unless of course you wanted your face melted off, I'm pretty sure I won the best Pizza and Pumpkin award, even though they told me it wasn't a contest. Anyway, we've been making these homemade pizzas for years now, sometimes in the oven, sometimes outside on the grill. When she cooks them on the grill, she'll brush the pizza crust of olive oil and sit it right on the hot grill, with no toppings on it. Cooking it for a few minutes to kind of set the dough, so it's stiff enough to work with, otherwise the dough would be to limp making it difficult to get your dough, loaded with topping on the grill, unless you had a pizza peel, but we don't have one.. yet, so this is our method. Once the dough firms up, she'll remove it from the grill and add the toppings to the pizza, before setting it back on the grill to cook for a few more minutes to melt the cheeses and finish it up. The kids love these pizzas and I've seen her do it enough, I thought I'd attempt to create my own.
Zuppa Toscana with Mushroom and Pheasant Stock
We had planted a few rows of Kale in our garden this year, to say it's been a bountiful year for it would be an understatement, it just keeps on giving! We had to figure out what we were going to do with all this kale. It was literally pilling up in our refrigerator, that and the Arugula ( Rocket Salad ) we planted.
