Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks. I'm here with my man Phil. We're going to La Rioja. For sure, the most important wine region in Spain. 100%. While we go there, we're going to talk about game. Yeah, not Squid Game. Not video games. Not the games. Not X Games. No, like deer, hare. Wild food. More. Cajuns, squab, etc. Pheasants. Yeah. Grouse, snipe, mallard. So, what's the deal with game? I mean, I absolutely love game.
I mean, I grew up in a family, I think like 50 % of the people in my family have a hunting license. In Germany, you need to have a license, which actually takes you about between a year and two
years to make. depending on like how how far you want to take it that doesn't also mean that you can just go out and hunt that means that you know about how the animals live what sort of cycles they have you know about what milk makes a healthy forest the anatomy of the animals etc etc diseases and then you can go with a local hunter and like all the territories kind of like divided up But yes, I grew up with a lot of game. It's a big part of German and Spanish cooking
culture. Yeah, Central Europe in general, I would say. Yeah, for sure. And some parts more than others, you know. For sure. What about you? For me, it's completely different. I grew up in Caracas, in a big city, and there is no hunting there
at all. There is hunting in... in venezuela like in deeper regions i remember having a deer in venezuela they're also like this river peak something like that okay like a capybara kind of yeah exactly oh yeah yeah we call it that's also something that you will find also some styles of boars but in general i i i was very ignorant to the whole game thing until i came to europe the first restaurant i i worked in europe was mugaritz and They've always worked with these little birds,
like different kinds of little birds. And for me, it's the best place where I've tried them. But then I also worked in Catalonia, in Racoda Campavas, where I had to pluck birds for weeks. Yeah. As a punishment. It's a lot of work. No, but literally, that's all I would do, like all day long, just pluck birds. But I also plucked birds in Mugari, so I already knew how to do this. And it was the first time that I got in contact with, you know, like having this strong
gamey flavor. Because I remember also having tried, let's say, boar in Venezuela for an international event. But for me, this was like some kind of like a dark pig without the gamey flavor. For me, that's like a very distinctive flavor that
makes the game game. And it's this, I would describe it, I don't know, like the smell of... a horse hair or something like that like a very strong aroma a very strong quality to it like iron and this kind of things yeah and for me that that's what game is about and and how you build a drink around it and a sauce and everything yeah absolutely i mean it's like gamey flavor i mean you call it gamey flavor you know in english it can be it can be very nice and very balanced and very
pleasant, or it can be really, really overpowering. It depends on a lot of stuff, you know, the stage of what the animal is in, how it's shot is very important, you know. So you can't just, it's not just like you shoot it until it's dead. Like, it has to be very specific shot. For example, deer, you have to shoot traditionally through the back shoulder blade into the heart so you don't rupture any important organs that will
taint the meat. I think we should, like, maybe go through, like, the different types of game.
and kind of talk about that you know i mean yeah sure in germany um it's definitely boar and um and deer the different types of venison yeah i mean boar you were talking about it's like water pigs what do they taste like i'm not i'm not super familiar with that one with the cheek reader like i i tried it a few times and it was not like uh i wasn't even a cook back then what i had back back there was like a boar Yeah, I really got in contact with what I understand
as game when I came to Europe. I mean, in Germany, like boar, there's boars everywhere, right? Boars almost to a point where they're a plague, especially like in the north of Germany, in the area around Berlin, Brandenburg, there used to be a big problem, which is why hunting is also important. We need to talk about the ethical side of hunting also,
right? especially like i feel like americans that's kind of like a hunting you're just shooting animals it's like gun obsession and blah but actually hunting done in a good way is maintaining a certain ecosystem because obviously it's the human influence that the ecosystems aren't what they used to be anymore but that's why it's also important to keep a sort of like equilibrium because there's not a natural sort of like predator prey um relationship anymore so you basically
i mean in germany anyway a job a hunter's job is to keep the forest healthy and keep the equilibrium going and so um yeah ball in germany plenty plenty also really high quality um usually like stewed but lately there's like a couple of chefs that have tried to approach balls in a different way because such a cool product and trying to find a different way of making it. So, for example, Lode van Zulian of a restaurant Remy in Berlin, he was serving this boar steak, which was super
cool, I thought, because nobody does that. Like with good pigs, when you separate, for example, if you take a thigh that you normally have to cut down and brace, but if you separate all the different muscle strands and the connective tissue, and then you can take these individual muscles and treat them almost like a piece of meat that you can cook pink. I think that's super, super
interesting. Oh yeah, for sure. We were just talking about that yesterday, because this conversation started because yesterday we had a game dish, becada. How do you say becada in Spanish? Snipe. Snipe. Snipe bird that was stood. And I had that bird before, but every time I had it, it was this more modern approach, like cooking it basically like a very rare steak, where it's just grilled on the outside or pink or even red on the inside.
And for me, that's the best way. for me still is the best way, like I really enjoy it that way. But the traditional way is stewed, you know, like in a sauce, cooked in a sauce and so on. Same thing with boars. Like I was traveling, I was backpacking in Italy, in the Tuscany, and there are a lot of boars around there. And I was like illegally camping around with my, just traveling with my tent. Because I was poor, I had no money for hotels. It was just a bum, basically.
Of course. Jokes aside, I would send my brother my GPS location every night. So if I got eaten by boars, at least he would know where to find me. Where to look through the boar poop to find remnants of area. And so I was scared about boars because I read about it. They're dangerous. They're dangerous. And basically what you have to do is you have to climb a tree to avoid any attack. So I would camp strategically where I would see a tree that I was able to climb and I would think
about this kind of stuff. But I didn't have contact just once with a boar and I shit in my pants. It was like, what the fuck? It just walked across
me and I was like, ah! And... so the only thing that made me feel better was just after that to go to a restaurant and have like a chingales too just to feel the superiority of my species of course as you do exactly i really enjoyed that but um so this again was like a poor stew yeah and cooked in sauce and i again like okay okay of course pork is more delicate and you have to really understand what you're doing if you're going to cook it pink or red yeah exactly
but it's also doable for sure you know like but you have to know what you're doing yeah i mean like game like meat is one of the best sources of protein that you can have it's mega mega healthy it's super good because if it's a good healthy animal with no diseases it'll have had a really really good life outside eating very very healthy things you know like little insects and herbs and perennials and stuff like that. Very lean most of the time, very little fat and just packed
full of nutrients and protein. It's really, really healthy. I think more people should eat game meat. Do game animals have microchips with GPS
in Germany? No, not really. Because I know a story about here some they have, but you will also find out, let's say in... well that with gps is more modern but for example with birds they would put rings in the rings yeah you know to study the bird you know like to measure how big the the wings are and if somebody catches the same bird like sometime later they can't do studies and this kind of stuff yeah so i know this story that they found like uh it was like
this board that had a gps and they found they found it in the freezer of a hunter in galicia yeah because it was illegally hunted but through the gps they they found the guy it was already chopped and freezed that's crazy that's so funny yeah you have to be careful yeah illegal hunting is a big thing it's like it's a big crime i remember for example in venezuela working in a restaurant where they would It was like a wedding, and they would arrive with these sacks, like potato sacks,
you know? Potato bags full of lobsters. But like, I'm talking about, I don't know, maybe 100 kilos of lobster, and this was out of season. So it
was illegal catching. yeah and just like ah you know we need to make money you know especially in latin america where whatever you can bribe whoever you can do whatever you want you know like these things are a huge ecological problem yeah what else deer obviously i think deer is the king of the game venison you know yeah i mean it's i was kind of wondering about this in other like places of the world i've only really seen venison like very popular in in europe it's
like there's a season if it's hunting season you know you'll see venison on a lot of menus boar stew or venison right venison loin usually but yeah yet again venison is also something that i've seen like traditional german recipes where it's marinated overnight with a lot of stuff and this kind of things and then stewed with like red wine and exactly an orange and lots of spices and and for me again like what i love about a good venison is eating it like
a steak or like a pink jay. 100%, that's so good. I mean, with venison also, it's really, really good. This technique that I was talking about, like two years ago, I used to have venison on the menu a lot because I was working with this venison farmer because you can farm venison also. He has like big areas where the deer run around
wild and stuff until they're shot. And he would send me shoulders that I would then like take apart, completely marinate with a little bit of garum that we were making from all the meat offcuts and then just grill. Grill, rest, grill, rest, grill, rest, pink. Absolutely delicious. That's all you need. Some of the best meat ever. You don't need to overcomplicate it. Just throw it to the grill. Yeah, totally. Do you think game can be raised in a farm or that wouldn't
be game anymore? No, I think so. Like, I mean,
it's definitely game. It's like, I mean, you can't raise it in a farm that is like bad farm practice anyway, you know, where everything is sort of like... you can have areas that are fenced off where they have a natural environment where they run around and you kind of control how they reproduce you can make sure that they have all the all the things that they need to eat they you know that they're healthy it's also good because they're like protected from from predators
and from other diseases you know cross contamination with like you know because like the game travels can travel like quite a long while and i think that's totally fine and i think that's actually really really good and that's this is a sort of farming practice that we should support more of where animals are in an environment that is their natural environment they're roaming free they're on the fresh air they're eating natural foods they're not getting pumped up full of hormones
and whatever and then at some point you know they are used for their meat yeah i remember with my brother in houston visiting a place where they had squab oh yeah but yeah these squabs were like you know America. So these were like micro fat chickens, you know, and it felt completely raised to me. It didn't have it. I mean, it was delicious. I have to say super fatty, but I was missing that gamey flavor that what I said that I could describe it as the smell of horse hair,
something like that. It didn't have this. And
I'm sure they were raised. birds you know like for me like a squat like a proper one you have to get the the bullets out of your mouth while you're eating you know like yeah yeah that's true i mean like for me the most beautiful uh game cooking that i've encountered was for one in england in the uk absolutely amazing if you've not been to the uk in like game season you know um it's it's super celebrated all the restaurants in london have game on the menu It's not just
like every now, here, and there, or like fine dining. There's venison. There's mallard, which is a wild duck, right? They're like ducks that are flying, you know, the fluke engine. Yeah. There's grouse. We had those wild dogs and campawas as well. They're amazing. Yeah, and it's like a completely different thing because again, it
has this gamey note that I'm saying. It can be uncomfortable for someone who doesn't understand what it is because it's a very strong flavor and it's not what you find in a normal supermarket dog. Grouse, also super underrated bird. Pheasant, you know, all over the place. And all the menus say underneath, like, I mean, mostly they say
game may contain shot. exactly yeah which is like important this is a natural product it gets shot it comes from the fucking countryside and it's kind of like a hunter that is skillful will shoot the game, especially the birds, because the birds need to be shot with like the small bullets, you know, the grape shot. Yeah, in Spanish it's perdigones, it's like a rain of little bullets.
They'll shoot it in a way that, you know, it doesn't damage the meat because if you shoot it wrong it's just going to completely blow up the bird. I was not kidding or nor exaggerating when I said that finding a bullet in your mouth is an indicator of the quality of game. And you have to understand that while you're eating, it's like when you're eating fish, you won't just swallow without thinking. You have to understand that there can be bones and you have to be careful.
Absolutely. A super, super beautiful game culture. And then obviously France has an insane culture
of cooking game. in a way that is almost mythical to me so things about that that i really love like french game cooking especially with birds is like taking all the offals and flambéing this and maybe adding some orange or citrus and i mean like this pate this paste of the all of the offals made into some kind of black pudding -ish kind of thing yeah i love that yeah i also love using the the offal to bind sauces together amazing yeah so so so delicious it might sound
to people that are not used to it really disgusting but it's um it's also not super easy to do because if you boil it it's going to curdle and it's going to be sort of like scrambled egg sauce and it's really awful also with blood because it's basically just pure protein um but if you do it right it's just like chocolatey creamy exactly that's also like a dirty trick adding just a little bit of chocolate just a little that you want it won't taste like chocolate you
can also do that of course but just a little bit that adds color it binds it it has this cocoa notes uh put on the back and i that for me that works amazingly well you know the thing about game cooking is now that we're talking about it is it's a real appreciation for the animal like i and i wish we would do that with more animals where it's kind of like like you were saying just with the offal a lot of restaurants that i really like for example the uk when you
order let's say a grouse or a snipe or whatever you often get like a little piece of like toasted bread with the offals flambéed on top of it like an awful toast yeah that's exactly what so you have the meat and you have the offers on the side and you you appreciate the whole animal yeah and because it's something special it took a lot of effort to get it and it's very short season you celebrate that time and that moment that you can have it and you celebrate the life
of the animal that you that you took so that you can eat it And I think that's really beautiful and I wish that we would do that with a lot more stuff. Imagine we would do that with chickens or imagine we would do that with cows. It would be amazing. Absolutely, yeah. And a lot less food waste. Well, I think all folks are having a comeback. Statistically, here in Spain, they're having a huge comeback. People are more open to it, both from the sustainability side but
also from the adventurous. approach to eating and you find more and more in restaurants of course there are traditional things that have always been there but like more strange things are starting to have way more acceptance yeah yeah totally game bones for me one of my favorite bases to cook sauce out of i used to when i was working at auto we used to make jus just by like getting really good venison bones which again is like using the whole animal right with a little
bit of meat on them roasting them really really dark Then piling a pot full of them with roasted onions and just adding enough water to cover it and then slowly reducing it down. Not like vegetables here and wine and blah, just like pure, pure meat sauce. Okay. It was super, super delicious. Completely concentrated. And for me, like, as you know, I'm not the person that will have wine all over the meal and every meal and
a long wine pairing with a meal. with game I think it's relevant to have like a proper full -bodied heavy strong red whatever it is absolutely in that direction yeah have you ever made um I haven't made it no no but I I know the dish and I've seen many versions of it and I I tried a few but I haven't cooked it myself it's a I think it's a super amazing dish I really got into it when I was at Mugaritz because when game
season hit We tried to look into it. Pascal Barbeau in his book, in his last transcript book, has like three pages talking about this dish. It's basically traditionally like a three -day process of like marinating the meat, cooking it down, straining, making the sauce, shredding the meat, putting it back together, putting it back into the sauce. It's basically hair in a very rich,
meaty game sauce. but it's so luxurious when it's done right i think like you know Paul Bocuse was famous for it it's really almost comically obscene rabbit with the heads that was then sourced yeah and this this famous head chef that he has this mustache guy that is an mof best craftsman in france he was like a master yeah it's such a luxurious dish it's uh it's amazing are snakes
game snakes Ah, snails. No, snakes. Snakes. Like if you're somewhere where there's snakes and you catch a snake, would you consider that game? Where do we draw the line? Wow. Okay, it's a good question because I feel it has to be red meat to be game. Otherwise, probably not reptiles. Because, of course, you can hunt a crocodile. And I've had that in Bolivia. We did ceviches with crocodile meat. Which is interesting because
it feels like a chicken. somewhere between a chicken and a fish ceviche with crocodile meat yeah wow that's intense yeah and yeah that that was like a super nice dish from camila's idler uh but yeah they they were like different so it was not a ceviche ceviche more like a tiradito with different parts of the watermelon uh so it was a like a nose to take cooking off the watermelon so like using all the parts of the fruit like the skin different parts and pickling
it and infusing it with the herbs and yeah super nice that's really cool one of the most outstanding game dishes that i've ever had it's also for me the dish that most stands out from my time in mugaritz was a dish that ramon perisse made and it was um kind of like a spontaneous dish for a returning customer and i think that like especially in the time when i was there the spontaneous dishes that they made for like regulars were the best And it was snipe that was stewed in
like a really Catalan sort of way, like a game stew with bacalao tribes, salt cod tribe. And this mixture of fish and game flavor together with the gelatinous quality that it gave to the meat sauce. That's insane. Absolutely insane. And I'm still thinking about that. Because that cod tribe is really like, it has such a particular
texture, you know. kind of sticky but soft and um it's fishy but but also mild so it's like a super interesting thing to me that was like still today like super super high yeah surf and turf with with especially with birds i think it's incredible yeah and when i'm talking about spices i think game is also like a super nice playground for spices i can think of rassel i can think of What's the thing that you put on gin? Juniper berries. Juniper berries or anise,
cinnamon, all those kind of things. But I think, again, you want to be subtle with spices. You want the meat to keep the protagonism. But, for example, if you have, like, you mentioned having a bread with this awful paste. Imagine, for example, a brioche that is spiced. Having that there, at least in my mental palate, works amazingly well. That's a really nice idea. A few years ago, I had these really, really wonderful geese on the menu. And geese, it's kind of like, well,
are they game? Kind of in the middle. But they are full of really beautiful offal. So I would do a piece of sourdough, toast it, like grilled, and then one side soaked in like geese jus and brown butter, just so like half of it soaks full. Then the offal grilled on the grill, put on top. And then from, we had Szechuan peppercorns that we were growing in the garden. Amazing. Just a little bit of like fresh green Szechuan pepper
on top. amazing absolutely amazing then you have a couple of herbs on top and you have this like juicy bread that when you bite into it the juices kind of flow out of the bread like a sponge and it's like slightly spicy creamy awful that was a stellar dish it was incredible you know what this is something i haven't tried but it makes perfect sense in my mind uh having a proper nice mole with game i think that's a much made in heaven 100 yeah absolutely easily one thing that
i also thought that was really cool is venison tataki so i used to work with this really really inspiring chef called junior yamasaki who's now got a restaurant in la called yes and he had a very very or still has a very unique vision very pure very real food and he used to take venison loins and skewer them and then on a grill throw a big bunch of hay so that it would like flame up and he would hold the venison into the flame so it was like half smoked half seared
really really high intensity and then take it off then slice it really thin as a tataki super delicious and he served that with back then with preserved crab apples you know crab apples these like little apples like this tiny wild apples yeah exactly you can't eat them raw you usually make them into like jellies or pickles or yeah and they have a super distinctive flavor also and you use that you kind of like preserve them with like it was like a little bit mustardy and
that together it was absolutely incredible um but obviously it takes balls to serve um venison raw but a venison tartar also amazing used to do this thing where all the rest of the like the offcuts of the venison i used to make into this chunky tartar there's this really cool technique about making tartar that people at home can adapt if they want to i'll tell you my secret technique you take the the meat that you have it has to be clean of all the sinews right you cut it into
walnut sized chunks or something that will work well for your grinder then you weigh it you calculate two percent of salt you add it to the meat mix it and you put it in the freezer so it's ice cold takes probably like half an hour and then you let that ice cold through a coarse mincer to mince it like one time and the salt obviously it seasons the meat throughout so it's almost like met you know have you had a met protein yes yes yeah yeah but also it cures the meat
it changes the texture texture slightly it makes it bright red and kind of like wow how can i describe it yeah that's very danish isn't it in a way yeah maybe it is yeah yeah like i've seen that for me that reminds me of the style of tortas you will find in copenhagen like at manfred yeah yeah that's true yeah it was kind of similar like that and it's super delicious it changes the texture i used to serve it with like um anchovy mayonnaise well my which again
is surf and turf yeah no and my top one tartar that i've ever had was a venison tartar in copenhagen i don't remember the place there's a place uh marvin ben oh yeah yeah okay and So it was venison tartare. But the interesting thing is, you know, in a tartare you want to add condiments, right? Like acidity, pickles, stuff like this. Well, it was, first of all, venison. And then all of this world of condiments and things was new Nordic.
So you would have elements of the forest, like pine pickles or pine sprouts and all these sort of things. And then on top of that, like the surf and turf component, also the egg. and salty component was caviar mixed into the tartare, which is something I think is relatively modern to find. And I see that more and more. I mean, caviar right now is completely hyped. Just recently, I saw an article in The Economist and New York Times that caviar is like on top of its moment
right now. It's at a peak moment. of consumption but yeah having caviar and tartars is something i would say relatively modern i i haven't seen that like i would say 20 years ago and now you see it relatively often anywhere you know and it had that it had like a cured quail yolk in the middle and then croutons and stuff and that was it it was incredible it sounds delicious That's it for this week's episode of Potluck
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