Hunt, gather, cook : finding the forgotten feast

337 Pages·2011·7.55 MB·English

by  Shaw

To Mom and Dad,
who showed me the way and taught me
that all things are possible.
CONTENTS
I
NTRODUCTION
PART I:
FORAGING FROM COAST TO COAST
1 W G A E
ILD REENS RE VERYWHERE
2 F B W
RUITS AND ERRIES OF THE ILD
3 A L U
CORNS: OVING THE NLOVED
4 B P S R M
EACH EAS, EA OCKETS, AND EMORIES
5 M W P
ISCELLANEOUS ILD LANTS
6 W F F
INES FROM RUIT AND LOWER
PART II:
FISHING AND FEASTING FROM STREAMS TO THE SEA
7 W F
HY ISH?
8 C T C
LAMS AND HEIR OUSINS
9 B O P
LUEGILLS AND THER ANFISH
10 C O C
ATCHING THE RNERY RAB
11 H S T E
ERRING AND HAD: IMING IS VERYTHING
12 R C P O B D
OCK OD, ORGIES, AND THER OTTOM WELLERS
13 T M A O P R
HE ISFITS OF MERICA’S CEANS, ONDS, AND IVERS
PART III:
HUNTING FOR FOOD AND FULFILLMENT
14 W H
HY UNT?
15 R H S
ABBITS, ARES, AND QUIRRELS
16 V D E A M
ENISON: EER, LK, NTELOPE, AND OOSE
17 W B W C
ILD OAR AND ILD HARCUTERIE
18 U G B P G Q
PLAND AME IRDS: HEASANT, ROUSE, UAIL
19 W D G M S
ATERFOWL: UCKS, EESE, AND THE YSTICAL NIPE
E P I A T
PILOGUE: UTTING T LL OGETHER
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
R
ESOURCES
F R
URTHER EADING
I
NDEX
INTRODUCTION
We live in an edible world. It’s all around us, if you look closely. You can see it
in lawns and at the beach. It thrives along every river, on hillsides, and deep in
swamps. You can even steal glimpses of it growing between the cracks of
abandoned parking lots and on untended mounds of earth forgotten long ago by
construction crews. Nature’s garden grows, yes, but it also flies through the air,
runs through the brush, and swims through the water.
Most have forgotten the feast that lives all around us. Many stalk the
supermarket aisles searching, not for real, honest food, but for the latest flavor of
frozen dinner or convenience food. Our hunting and gathering is now largely
restricted to picking through the produce aisle for the best ear of corn or keeping
an eagle’s eye out for so-called bargains. But our instincts are strong. We’ve
been hunters and gatherers eons longer than we’ve been farmers. Esau is far
older than Jacob. Who among even the most urban of us has not eyed a ripe
blackberry with interest, even lust, while walking along a path on a hot
summer’s day? I live in a county of nearly two million people, many of whom
run, walk, or ride our local bike trail every day. On that trail, I can be assured
that much of what I forage for during the year will remain untouched and
unnoticed by these masses. But not the blackberry. As soon as they ripen in July,
they are gorged upon by passersby. It is the gatherer in us trying to escape.
What stops the blackberry pickers from enjoying the miner’s lettuce,
mushrooms, or acorns that surround the bramble? Innocent ignorance and a
healthy fear of the unknown. But recognizing wild plants, fish, and animals is no
different than recognizing the difference between a head of lettuce and a head of
cabbage, or the difference between a deer and a horse. If you can pick a
blackberry, you can pick other berries. Or dandelions. Digging clams is not such
a stretch, nor is fishing. And for many, with fishing comes hunting—the quest
for the original free-range, organic meat does not stop at the water’s edge.
I am not content to merely be a spectator in nature. I feel compelled to play
the part humans were born to play. Gathering acorns. Picking berries. Digging
clams. Hunting birds. These are active pursuits that bring me closer to nature and
make me deeply aware that we are all part of the natural world. We cannot live
outside nature, as estranged as we may feel sometimes, living in cities or
subdivisions. The natural world is not a museum, filled with exhibits to be
looked at but never touched. It is our home.
I’ve felt this need to be outside ever since I was a toddler. I am blessed with a
father who gave me an overabundance of curiosity, a mother who gave me a
love of the outdoors, and sisters who encouraged this from an early age. My
mother taught me to fish, and some of my family’s finest hours have been
digging clams, fishing for stripers, and feasting at the table afterward.
As I grew older, I realized that most people weren’t like us. Most people
couldn’t name any of the plants or animals they saw around them. My father can
name every bird within a hundred miles of his house, and my mother made sure
there were encyclopedias of natural history on our bookshelves, set low enough
so a grade-school kid could reach them. This sort of knowledge is real power.
When I walk anywhere, even in cities, my eyes automatically catalog the plants
and animals around me: That’s a walnut tree. Those are dandelions. Ooh,
mourning doves! Wonder if there are crayfish in that stream? Look at that—a
giant prickly pear that no one’s tending. Someone once said that you have to
really want to starve to death in the wilderness, because food is all around you.
Knowing your plants and animals can mean life or death.
I want you to have that knowledge. This is why I wrote the book you are
holding now. Knowing your plants and animals, learning to forage and fish and
hunt, and then understanding what to do with what you have found is, for many,
a deeply spiritual experience. It is for me, and for every hunter, angler, and
forager I know. Once you acquire this knowledge, you may feel the same way.
What is it you will see, out there in the wild world? You’ll witness things
while hunting or fishing or foraging you will never experience any other way. A
forager must walk off the beaten path. An angler never knows what she’ll reel in.
A hunter must become invisible and silent. This is why we all have so many
stories. The world is endlessly fascinating—it’s better than the best nature show
you’ve ever seen. You can smell it, taste it, feel it on your skin and in your
hands. As your skills strengthen, you also will begin to notice something in
yourself you only dimly knew existed: You will start feeling more like a
complete human, capable of foraging for supper, fishing for breakfast, and
hunting for the long winter ahead. You will know how to cure meats, make
foods from scratch you thought only came in boxes, and make your own wine to
wash it all down with. That feeling is you emerging from your secondhand
existence, like a fawn taking its first steps.
I am not asking you to forgo the supermarket. I go there every week, largely
for flour, sugar, dairy products, and beer. No, I don’t make my own beer. Yet.
While this book focuses on fishing, foraging, and hunting skills, it also will help
you learn how to make more of your meals from basic ingredients, not
prepackaged foods. Honest food need not be wild, but it must be made by hand
and with love.
I want to help you become a more active participant in the food you eat, the
food you feed your family and friends. For the most part, that food does not
come “ready to eat.” It doesn’t have a shiny label and wasn’t raised on a factory
farm or subjected to genetic modification. It is, as author Michael Pollan puts it,
food your grandmother, or really your great-grandmother, would recognize. Our
grandparents and great-grandparents knew many of the skills in this book. It’s
time we relearned them. The basic act of knowing how to find your own food, to
feed yourself with a meal you didn’t buy, is a small act of freedom in an
increasingly regimented and mechanical world.
What, you may ask, is the big deal with wild food? For starters, wild food
lived by its own devices. It was not fed a strict diet of anything. It was not fed. It
fed itself. It is free from our dubious husbandry and, in most cases, is the better
for it. Wild plants such as lamb’s-quarters or amaranth are so full of vitamins
they make spinach look like a Twinkie. Wild fish are universally recognized by
eaters and experts alike as tastier than those reared by aquaculture. Why is it that
wild salmon, rather than their pale farmed cousins, are so sought after? Taste.
Wild game is not legal to sell in the United States, but those privileged enough to
eat it know that, when properly prepared, it is infinitely more savory than its
domestic counterparts. Anyone who has eaten both domestic duck and a fat
mallard from the marshes knows this as a matter of faith. It is also my firm belief
that the more diverse our diets are, the healthier we will be. Introducing wild
food to your diet goes a long way toward achieving this goal.
Hunting occupies a full third of this book, and it is for good reason. Hunting is
a pursuit utterly opaque to those not raised around it, and many of us who did
grow up around hunters often remember those who set a bad example rather than
a good one. This is a pity, because these are the “good ol’ days” of hunting for
much of the game that lives in North America, especially whitetail deer. The
populations of game in this country are, for the most part, higher than at any
time in more than a century. Thankfully, more people interested in local, fresh,
and sustainable food are taking up hunting, if for no other reason than that it is
more humane. Consider this: Before it was shot, a wild animal led exactly the
life nature intended it to live. And a well-placed shot, which kills in seconds, is a
far better fate than most deaths in the wild. But if you’ve never held a gun
before, how do you even begin to take that first step into the field? This book
provides a primer.
I also spend considerable time on fishing, mostly for the lesser-known species.
You won’t see tuna, salmon, or codfish in this book. In fact, the only fashionable
fish included is the Pacific rock cod, which is still widely available largely
because there is only a limited commercial fishery for them. I have been a
fisherman all my life, and I have seen firsthand the decline of all but a handful of
our fisheries. One reason for this decline is the distressing issue of bycatch,
where fishermen catch species they did not intend to, and those fish are just
tossed back into the sea, often to die. This happens with recreational anglers, too.
I hate waste, so I learned early on that most anything you catch can be delicious,
if you know how to cook it. I’ve always preferred odd fish, and while not all of
the species I write about are truly unusual, all can be caught by hook and line,
without fear of damaging the resource.
This is, at its core, a book about food. Hunting food, gathering food, and most
of all, preparing food. My hope is that this book will be as useful to you in the
kitchen as it is in the field. It includes recipes and techniques that will form the
foundation of your wild food repertoire. Some are easy, most are more involved.
A few are downright fancy. Every recipe will have domestic substitutions, such
as chicken for pheasant or beef for venison, but I urge you to try to gather at
least some of your own wild ingredients.
Maybe you don’t want to hunt. But you can add foraged greens to a meal
made with domestic meats. Maybe you forage but don’t know how to fish. Now
you can add a fresh-caught bass or herring or porgy to your meal. Adding wild
food to your meals enlivens the dishes themselves as well as those who eat them.
As the great forager Euell Gibbons once said, how can the talk at the table be
dull when everything on the plate is a conversation piece? You and your family
can’t help but be more interested in your food when every meal comes with its
own adventure story.
Eating wild foods is not only a rejection of industrial agriculture and the food
manufacturing establishment, it is also a celebration of something truly magical:
a meal you cannot buy in a store at any price. And what’s more: You brought it
home, all by yourself.
P I
ART
FORAGING FROM COAST TO COAST