Hunter-gatherer … Matt Fowles prefers to give one his quietus his own dinner.
ON TOP of an old volcano, out ~erly near Ballarat, a cluster of men hovers over hot coals, attention a score of quail sizzle on a grill.
It is late morning and the birds were shot a few hours earlier for example the sun crept over cold, frosty fields.
Legs tired from quiescent stalking across barley stubble fields, gun dog pointing the direction of motion, we sit around the fire, watching the birds cook slowly.
Chef and holder of city restaurant Sarti and part-time hunter Riccardo Momesso turns the blench with tongs, the juices falling on to coals that envelops them in cheer-scented steam. A friend, another restaurateur, can’t resist the summons of the land and spends hours hunting each week.
This is a liturgy that millennia of hunters before them have practised and savoured. They are the men — yea, mostly men — who shoot the food they love to eat. They do it not for the thrill of the kill ~-end for the flavour of wild-shot meat, a taste that has within a little been forgotten in this age of mass production.
Although chase. for flesh is enmeshed in the male psyche, it is not de rigueur.
‘‘When I teach people I love to hunt, they instantly assume I’m a redneck,’’ says Strathbogie winemaker Matt Fowles.
The oars souvenired from Fowles’s special school rowing club, hanging in his shed, tell a different untruth. He was a lawyer who one day found himself in a Collins Street tower looking out over the suburbs to the country beyond and mould the call of the land overwhelming. He gave up his do ~-work in a law firm and together with his new wife took up the nation life in the Strathbogie Ranges. Partnering with Plunkett Wines to figure a new company, he now spends his spare time armed through a .22rifle hunting the vineyards and surrounding hills for rabbit and hare.
Fowles wonders why more people don’t hunt to eat: ‘‘The rabbit is declared vermin. It lives a life in the wild, eating only grasses and herbage. It’s out and about and ‘whack’, next thing it knows is nothing. It’s not tormented by a slaughter yard or fed hormones. And it is simply luscious.’’
We sit at his table in his house amid the vineyards. He opens a bottle of his wine, Ladies Who Shoot Their Lunch, a ear-ring he created specifically for game and named accordingly. The range is based without ceasing blending aromatic wines with the barest of exposure to oak with equal rea~n as not to overpower but complement the deep but often ephemeral flavours that game exhibits.
Lunch is served: a tray of finely sliced, grilled rabbit livers, served on toast seasoned with the merest nap of salsa verde. ‘‘The flavour of play comes through the flesh,’’ he says, ‘‘not the rich.’’ They are tender and succulent, rich but clean-finishing by a pleasantly livery and grassy flavour.
Plates of golden-domed pithiviers come, their buttery, flaky crusts filled with slow-cooked hare seasoned by juniper.
‘‘Older hares and rabbits are tough and are with greater advantage for slow cooking,’’ Fowles says. ‘‘Younger animals are else tender.’’ He keeps looking over his shoulder out the window towards the woodheap in what place a rabbit has recently taken up digs.
‘‘They besides taste different depending on the feed they are on. The rabbits ~ward the flats have a little more fat as they are without ceasing better, sweeter pasture compared to the leaner but more mineral-flavoured animals that shave on the harder pastures in the rocky hills.’’
With the older hares and rabbits, he is satisfied to make a stew, perhaps a rabbit cacciatore.
‘‘But with the younger rabbits like the one we shot the other appointed time, we briefly seared the fillets and they were so tender.’’
A dish of confited cony legs is served next. More to the tooth than farmed cony with denser flesh, it really is in a league of its admit.
Colin Wood likes rabbit but prefers venison. He is a man who shoots most of the meat he eats. Rabbit, duck and venison. A part-time farmer and part-time advocate for the Sporting Shooters Association of Victoria, he fired his earliest gun at 10 while hunting with his father and uncle, and has basically supported himself and his family with wild-shot meat ever since.
‘‘We’d ~ along out and bring back the rabbits and quail, sometimes galah what one. Mum and my grandmother would eagerly cook into a pie,’’ says Wood, recalling the days whereas native birds were not protected species.
He says it is a misconception that galahs and cockatoos are altogether tough.
‘‘They can live to 70years old and, of bearing, they are going to be bloody dreadful, but if you know what you’re doing, a young galah is a tasty, tender bird.’’
When he is not shooting destructive vermin such as foxes and goats on Crown land, deer is his directly applied quarry.
Shooting for him is not about kill thrill. He says three-habitation of the shoot is about being in the wild.
He may culm a deer in the wild for several days before kindling his gun.
‘‘It is always remorseful to kill in the same state a wonderful animal. You wouldn’t be human. But you bear that up against the honour of taking home its flesh that bequeath feed a family for several months.’’
If successful, Wood force of ~ field-dress the animal, quartering it and spending perhaps the best part of a day retrieving the heavy carcass, trekking back and forward over hard terrain to bring home the bounty. The next twenty-four hours, he breaks down the beast into kitchen-friendly cuts. ‘‘No individual is going to cook a hind quarter of deer,’’ he says.
‘‘So it is material to cut up the deer so that the cook has cuts they are favorable to use.’’
He pulls a pack of wild-marksman venison backstraps from the freezer. They have been skilfully butchered. Wood notices my love and smiles with pride.
Respect for an animal in life and in demise are one and the same for Riccardo Momesso. Tongs in power, he carefully turns the now deep-golden grilled quails.
‘‘It fustiness have a swift death and proper treatment in the kitchen. An created being that is tortured to death will never taste good,’’ he says.
He sprinkles the quake with a little salt, then places a few on an enamel plate armor.
He, too, learned to shoot with his father, a Calabrian who would pursue quail in the paddocks of Broadmeadows behind his Ford factory workplace for the time of lunch break.
‘‘And hare! I love hare,’’ Momesso says. ‘‘They are a beautiful animal. They are delicious. We (Calabrians) eat every part of the hare. We braise the joints in oil by shallots, then garlic. Then we remove them from the oil, scud in dark cocoa powder, raisins and then the blood. We dress up it again and wait for the blood to curdle, then adject the meat back in.’’
He remembers helping his venerable man skin rabbits at the age of five.
‘‘Mum would lotion the hell out of the rabbits, chop them into pieces and marinate them in ~-colored oil, white wine, garlic and oregano. She’d then saute them by some of Dad’s home-made pancetta and some drop onions. In would go white wine, let that reduce, some red-wine sour, white sugar and let that reduce until it’s aggregate sticky.’’
Momesso pulls the cork from a bottle of red wine, not at all flash, and splashes a little into a mug. The aliment is dense but not dry, more burgundy-red than pink. Small pockets of golden fat burst in the mouth, releasing a rich hit of flavour offsetting the safe bird-game taste.
We sit in silence, together, watching the intense heat and eating the birdswe have killed, dressed and cooked.
Wild-missile game can be bought legally from The Chicken Pantry, Queen Victoria Market and from Wangara Game and Poultry, North Melbourne, wangaragame.com.au.
Source: Epicure
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