More Lobsters and Another Shell Midden

 

When I picked up lobsters at the bait barge for my roommates, I talked to the lobsterman and they agreed to keep and hold some large crabs for me. We agreed that I'd drop by again in a few days and they would have the crabs. Amazingly enough in Maine it is incredibly difficult to purchase live crabs. Anyway, I showed up a few days later and none of the lobstermen had kept any crabs for me. So instead of crabs I grabbed some hard shells for Stuey, my mom and I. Stuey got 2 big lobsters just for himself. With my roommates we had purchased soft shell and it is amazing how different they are from Hard shells. Soft shells taste sweeter but Hard shells have much more meat and the body and legs are meaty enough to be worth eating.

On a gloomy afternoon Stuey and I went exploring up Perry's Creek by kayak. I had flashbacks to my archaeological surveys on Kodiak by kayak. And I even found a shell midden - Just like when I was back in Uyak Bay this past May (click here for post). I took pictures and recorded what I saw and will try and report them to an archaeologist in Maine. But I don't know the archaeological scene in Maine so it might be difficult to find anyone interested in I found.

Patrick

Kayak trip to the very head of Perrys Creek

Eroding shell midden

A couple of flakes I saw on surface

Cooking in the field

Cooking breakfast on the big stove

 To save weight and space we used titanium wood stoves for cooking. They roll up into packages the size of a book and weigh less than 2 pounds. Our small teepee and woodstove weighs 3-4 pounds combined. The pots and pans and other stuff weigh more than the wood stoves. Woodstoves also provide heat and comfort. They serve the purpose of a campfire that we can gather around. The afternoon we had a rain and windstorm - it was nasty outside - cooking quesadillas on the woodstove saved the day.

Woodstoves are great to cook on - you can cook things a little slower without fearing of burning the food on the 'hot spot' typical of camp propane burner stoves. We typically cook red beans and rice and pasta type meals. We do use a jet boil type stove to boil water that we add to the dishes to save time. We do not eat the freeze dried meals that a lot of lightweight campers use in the field. Our food is far, far better. We eat real food and even add fresh vegetables like nettles to them. 

Our trick to cooking pasta in the field is to add just enough water that the pasta can absorb it all. I typically pour the boiling water in to just below the tops of the pasta - and only to pasta with 'structure' like bowties etc. Then there is no need to pour off the water at the end and create a bear attracting mess near camp.

Patrick

Little stove in action

Quesadillas on the small stove

Pasta with nettles

reducing the nettles into the pasta

adding the nettles to the pasta

dinner onion, garlic and sausage prep

Corned Elk and Pastrami too!

Corned elk and vegetables dinner!

I recently learned that it is really easy to make elk pastrami. In the old days I had a really elaborate recipe (click here for old recipe) where I made corned elk without the pink salt (Julia Childe corned beef recipe), and then actually smoked it. What I recently learned is that you do not need to actually smoke corned elk to make pastrami. Instead you coat it with a smoked paprika and coriander rub and bake it covered in tinfoil in the oven. So simple and it is really good pastrami. It is BETTER than the elk pastrami I've had that was actually smoked (and ends up too dry).

My old corning recipe was a little complicated too. Rather than a brine I used a dry rub and pressed the meat with a weight on top, and turned it every day. This time I used an actual brine and added the pink salt (nitrate). (click here for the basic recipe that I used). So much easier and the pink salt makes the meat pink like the corned beef you buy in the store. My old 'grey' corned beef was probably better for you health-wise, and actually tastes about the same but it does not look anywhere near as tasty when you cut it up. Grey meat just does not look appetizing.

Anyway, I cut up a big elk roast and corned all the pieces in a brine. Then I made pastrami with about half the pieces and kept the rest in the refrigerator and had a couple of corned elk dinners over the next couple of weeks. So easy!

Patrick
 

A piece of corned elk that I turned into dinner (above)

Sliced elk pastrami

Coriander and paprika spice rub for making the pastrami

Deer and Yard

 

Red alder catkin

All by myself I have continued to try and eat as much deer and elk meat as possible.  Without kids around each dish generally lasts about 3 meals. 

For steak and eggs I keep a deer backstrap in the fridge and cut off round steaks to quickly fry. In the picture below I also added home fries from my garden and poached eggs. I've been liking poached eggs lately because the whites are always perfect and not hard or rubbery. 

Further below is a pot roast I made a few days ago. I cooked the roast in the stew at 180 degrees for almost 24 hours. Then I dished it out on top of a 'Patrick Style' pasta Alfredo. I make my Alfredo with baby bell cheese, flour, garden garlic, milk, thyme and some grated manchego cheese.

Patrick

deer steak and poached eggs on hash browns

Red alder seed pod

deer pot roast on pasta

Elk Burger Pie

 

The other night I experimented cooking with some elk burger and leftover gravy from a roast. Rather than make a classic shepherds pie topped with mash potatoes or as I call it a 'hunter's pie' (Click here for Old Hunter's Pie recipe). I decided to top my normal hunter's pie recipe with a pre made pie crust. In my fridge I already had some leftover gravy and a pie crust that had been in there a while. So I wanted to use them up.

Anyway, it worked out great. The gravy was an awesome addition and made it as good as a 'Marie Callender's' pot pie (my highest praise for a pot pie). My pre made pie crust did not do so well. It was stuck together and hard to roll out without tearing, but I think that is because it was probably past its recommended 'use by' date.

Patrick

Basic ingredients - that's a hunk of frozen hedgehog mushrooms in foreground

Vegetables browning and leftover gravy heating up

Added a little flour to browning vegetables

added elk burger

heated up frozen peas under hot water in colander in sink and added at end

added left over gravy (broth if no gravy handy) and capped with pie crust

Baked for 50 minutes at 350 and then left to rest for 10 minutes before I ate some

Garden is Alive!

 

A couple of weeks ago my garden was covered with a thick layer of snow. Even with continual rain and warm weather it took a while for all the snow to melt. But melt it did, and this past weekend I noticed that the kale and collard greens are still alive. Better yet the collard greens look very healthy and are putting up new shoots. At least I think they are collard greens. They were planted as part of a packet of gourmet salad seed mix. There were kale seeds in the packet too, and they are still alive too (but not looking very healthy).

In any case, what I think are collard greens are quite tasty. I put them in all sorts of dishes last fall, and this past weekend I harvested some more leaves. I cut them up with some store bought broccoli and added them to some ramen noodles. I added them to the boiling water when the noodles were just about done. Then poured off the water and added the ramen flavor packets. A very good, quick lunch.

Now I got to figure out exactly what variety of collard greens I got out in the garden. I want to plant a bunch more! A plant that hardy and tasty is what I want in my garden.  I may even encourage the plants to go to seed in the spring, and see if I can get some seeds that way.

Patrick

Update: I did some google sleuthing and I now think my 'collard greens' are actually 'Siberian kale' - that's what they most closely resemble anyway. But last Fall I did the same sort of sleuthing and was convinced they were collard greens - so who knows. Maybe this spring I'll buy both seed varieties.

Mountain Goat Pho

 

I ended up with a lot of leftovers after cooking up a big mountain goat roast for just myself. I did the hot gravy on thinly sliced meat - yummy. And then I tried something new. I added thinly sliced leftover meat to an instant pho noodle bowl - and WOW!

My big complaint with the noodle bowls has always been the lack of meat. They are just broth and rice noodles and basically lack substance. But adding thinly sliced mountain goat added the needed heft, and made it perfect.

Patrick

Goat Roast

 

This is my dinner from last night. A friend of mine gave me a mountain goat roast, and asked that I give him an honest report of how it came out. So last night I documented the process of cooking up the goat roast and sent him the pictures. 

Basically I browned onions in a roasting pan for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees and then added the goat roast and turned the oven off. Later I turned it back on at 170 and waited for the meat to hit an internal temperature of 127. Low and slow! I then browned the outside in a very hot cast iron frying pan.

I served my goat with home fries made from garden potatoes, and fried onion and hedgehog mushroom gravy. These are mushrooms I collected while I was on Shuyak this Fall.

The goat came out great!

And now I will have it for lunch and for another dinner. I do not re heat game because it often tastes gamy and gets tough when re heated. Rather I will slice it very thinly like cold cuts and then pour copious amounts of hot gravy on top. mmmmmmm

Patrick