Game Time: From Grouse And Partridge To Venison And Bison

I’ve been asked often enough what the greatest meal of my life was, so I’ve considered the question and come up with the answer: It was a plump grouse roasted rare with green cabbage and a syrupy reduction of red wine, served to me at a long-gone restaurant in London. Never having had grouse before, I was wholly unprepared for the riveting flavor of its meat, a deep, dark wild taste mingled with the red wine that just gushed over my tongue. I remember every bite. Game can do that to the receptive palate.

I don’t fully understand why so many people have no problem chowing down on Porky Pig and Donald Duck but recoil at the thought of eating Bambi and Bugs Bunny. I know it has to do with the perception that some animals are cuter than others and therefore deserve to escape the gastronome’s table, but it certainly shouldn’t have anything to do with an ill-advised belief that deer, as well as elk, antelope, geese, pheasant, grouse, quail and wild boar, are being shot by hunters despoiling the wilderness or driving such animals to extinction.

The fact is, every morsel of every game animal in every restaurant and butcher shop in America comes from a farm where they are raised, fattened, slaughtered and inspected specifically for those markets. One need not get into an argument about the morality of hunting to accept the notion that game animals are now treated exactly the way chickens, steers, lambs, and pigs are for consumption. The exception to this would be imported game from Scotland, where a deer or grouse still may be shot in the wild, but must be quickly inspected by a health official before being sold in the marketplace.

This is all to the good, because the increasing availability of excellent, healthy game is a boon not only for the gourmet but for anyone interested in fine meat that is also low in fat. And, although wild game generally have a different flavor (dependent on what they eat) from farm-raised game, the variety now offered in restaurants, by butchers and by mail order is amazingly rich. Chefs adore game for a chance to play with other flavors and textures that go better with certain fruits and vegetables than does the ubiquitous sirloin, breast of chicken or veal chop.

The thought of rare roast partridge with dried cranberries and wild rice, or a hearty haunch of venison au grand veneur in a reduction of Port wine and red currants, seems far more glorious in autumn, winter and early spring than it does in the heat of summer. The season for wild game begins in the fall and continues into winter, though the availability of farm-raised game has made the seasonal appetite for such meats more traditional than necessary.

For some, squeamishness about eating game is based on the erroneous—though understandable—belief that game is, well, gamey. But just as fresh fish should never taste fishy, so, too, game should have a distinct but mild flavor. Indeed, to my taste too much farm-raised game is rather bland, especially pheasant, and the venison widely imported from New Zealand has a consistency chefs love but which I find all too boring from meal to meal. Those who have never tasted wild venison can’t imagine the luxurious flavor of the meat, whose flavor is determined by the diet and age of the animal. Some of the finest I’ve ever eaten has been venison provided to me by a hunter friend who shoots exclusively with bow and arrow.

Game should be slightly aged, but the fashion in France and England for game hung for several days, even weeks, is not only outdated but highly dangerous, so that even the bible of French cuisine, Larousse Gastronomique, now notes that hanging meat till it’s “high” can cause the flesh to be toxic. (It can also stink.) No game you buy at a market or eat at a restaurant is ever going to be hung more than a few days, but aging under controlled cold temperatures, a day or two for deer, and perhaps a few days longer for birds, breaks down the muscle and fibers of the meat and makes it more tender and more digestible as well as flavorful.

The traditions of game cookery are very strong in human gastronomy, quite obviously going back to those prehistoric days when bringing back meat from the wild was the only thing that kept tribes alive. Much later the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans created game preserves for the sport of hunting, and by the Middle Ages the hunting of game was largely restricted to the aristocracy, so that when the French Revolution was in full swing, the invisible gates to the forests were flung open to the peasantry, an event that in turn required people to pay for a license to hunt game, lest the species be completely wiped out within decades.

Game, therefore, became once again food only for those who could afford it, except in America, where the vast herds of game animals, including single herds containing up to 12 million buffalo, filled the great plains and the skies were literally blackened by game birds. Their slaughter, sometimes to extinction, brought about the need for both preservation and the farming of stocks, so that no one now need fear eating any game that has not been raised solely for one’s delectation.

It goes without saying that the diet of the mountain men, overwhelmingly fur trappers, who first ventured into the Colorado territory was wholly based on what they could shoot, some of it made into jerky, which was highly nutritious, full of fat and salt, and easy to carry in one’s saddle bags. There was scant evidence any of it was cooked with much refinement, causing Horace Greeley to append to his exhortation to “Go West, young man,” with the comment that what the West really needed was “a thousand good cooks.”

Nevertheless, the traditions of American game cookery have much to do with what was available where. In fact, western game like elk, grizzly bear, even buffalo tongues were shipped back east as delicacies, while in Colorado boom towns like Aspen, the local saloon was probably serving such items as part of the free lunch.