Wild game cooking: The Velveted Rabbit

Yeah, you heard me right. I'm not talking about The Velveteen Rabbit, the children's novel, but velveted rabbit.

Velveting is a Chinese cooking technique used on chicken to ensure it stays moist during the cooking process. I "discovered" it about 14 years ago when I started cooking a lot of Asian food, but I didn't even know it had a name until this summer.

I'd been hunting cottontails, and I'd remembered this recipe for Cantonese Lemon Chicken in The Essential Asian Cookbook. Chicken breast never tasted juicier than it did with this recipe, so I thought it would be great for rabbit, because rabbit also dries out easily. Coincidentally, about a week later when I was reading the August/September issue of Saveur (whose logo, coincidentally, is a rabbit), I discovered the term "velveting."

Velveting is ridiculously simple, and an excellent way to ensure bite-sized pieces of white meat retain their juices - not only for immediate consumption, but after re-heating as well. You can also add any flavor you want - it doesn't have to be Asian.

Here's the essential backbone of "velveting" (there are photos at the end for each stage):

• 1 pound of meat, cut into bite-sized pieces (I like pieces that are 1/4-inch thick, cutting across the grain, and as long as they need to be)
• The white of 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• A little more than 2 tablespoons of liquid (the Asian version calls for 1 tbs. water, 2 tsp. sherry and 2 tsp. soy sauce; in the dish shown here, I used half water and half sauvignon blanc)
• About 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• Salt to taste

Directions: Put the cornstarch in a small bowl, add water/liquids and stir with a fork to a smooth consistency. Add the lightly whipped egg white and stir. Add this mixture to the meat and let it to sit for 10 minutes. Then cook the meat in small batches in a hot frying pan with as much or as little hot oil as you'd like, adding salt to taste. I let it get nice and browned on one side before flipping it, then stir it around to finish cooking the meat.

Put all the meat back in the pan and add any other ingredients you'd like to use. In the dish shown here, I used chopped garlic, toasted pine nuts and sliced scallions. Cook just long enough for the flavors to blend, stirring constantly. Serve over rice. Or whatever.

One note: When I made the Asian version of this recipe, the 2 teaspoons of soy sauce in the marinade didn't make it salty enough for me, so I added more in cooking. I'm a salt fiend, though, so I recommend you taste it for yourself and add salt to your tastes.

How does velveting work? The starch-protein marinade creates an invisible seal around the meat, trapping moisture without adding any noticeably eggy or starchy taste.

The reason I was so excited about this recipe is that I've found it difficult to cook some wild game in a way that reheats easily so I can take it to work, but velveting really does the trick. I ate velveted rabbit every day last week and the rabbit remained juicy to the end.

The funny thing about this recipe is that the original one I followed used the whole egg, including yolk, which is not part of the traditional velveting process. But 14 years ago I aspired to be very thin, so I used egg whites instead to remove that fat from the recipe. Turns out I'd accidentally made it more authentic.

Try this out next time you've got some game that dries out easily, like cottontail or pheasant breast. I think you'll find it's actually much more effective than wrapping dry meats in bacon, and not much more work at all.

Now, for the photos:

Sliced cottontail backstrap (OK, the rest of my rabbit didn't look this pretty). I slice the meat across the grain about 1/4 inch thick.

The marinade: cornstarch, water, sauvignon blanc and lightly beaten egg whites.

The meat soaking in the marinade in a shallow container. Make sure the marinade coats everything.

The meat, browned just how I like it. I swear it doesn't dry out!

Additional ingredients of your own choosing. Shown here: garlic, toasted pine nuts, sliced scallions.

The finished product. Yum!

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

The odd allure of a lousy dove season

A week ago, I was worried that I was going to have a lousy dove season because I hadn't shot skeet much over the summer. I figured by this time - 10 days into the season - I'd be burning through spendy steel shells at a shameful rate.

For some strange reason, it didn't occur to me that my spot might be anything short of epic the way it was last year. I can still smell the best day - hot, dusty, sweaty, doves coming in so relentlessly that I couldn't reload fast enough. Blood, feathers and dirt on my hands. A limit well before the sun went down. That funny feeling: It's too early to leave!

Well, I certainly haven't had to endure that problem this year. But what's really peculiar is that I seem to be enjoying the season just as much.

My first day sucked, by most dove-hunting standards. I went out with friends last Saturday morning and staked out a spot in a shallow, dry ditch. The flight was minimal. My two best opportunities came from behind and the birds were too far away before I saw them. I got distracted by pigeons and kept firing at them, somehow forgetting that pigeons wear body armor and will not succumb to anything less than a shell full of BBs. For me, at least.

I killed one dove that morning, but I never found it in the neatly identical rows of the stiff, foot-high stalks of cut safflower. I'd rather kill nothing at all than kill a bird only to fail to retrieve it. No bueno.

But throughout the whole thing, I found that the rhythm of the day so comforting. As the sky brightened, I re-awakened my long-distance ID skills: Killdeer? Swallow? Dove? Oh yeah, swallows don't land in the field...

Even the methodical search for the lost dove felt good. My eyes had spent the summer looking through camera lenses and staring at images and words on computer screens, but now they knew what to do: Let your focus go limp, sweep a short arc in front of you, left, right, left, right.

It felt so good that I went home cheerful, despite being just eight shells poorer.

The next day, I went back for an evening hunt. The flight wasn't much better, but I planted myself in the sweetest little spot: It was in a corner of the safflower field. There was a little triangle of uncultivated land that housed bee hives, junk, star thistle, blackberries, a fig tree and ...

Prrhhhhhhhhhhhhhdt! Prrhhhhhhhhhhhhhdt! Prrhhhhhhhhhhhhhdt!

... a big covey of quail. I laughed as I punched down a spot in the waist-high weeds, then set up my chair and settled in.

It was a much better spot than the ditch. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see several doves pecking at the dirt in the shade - too far from me, and besides, I would've been shooting toward a road. But after a while, they got up. I wheeled around, raised my gun ...

No!

... I'd never find them if I dropped them in that weedy triangle, so I lowered my gun. But then they curved around.

Bang! Bang! One dropped 10 yards from me at the edge of the triangle. As I approached it, I saw how enormous it was. Gotta be one of those Eurasian collared doves.

I was right. This was my first - a good one to have in the bag because there's no limit on them. They're invasive, and the state would like us to kill as many as possible.

I got two more doves that afternoon. Dropped 'em about ten yards into the safflower field where I had no trouble finding them. But my favorite shot of the day was my last one.

I'd been seeing movement in the field, but when I'd stare to figure out what I was seeing, all I saw was crisp safflower leaves waving in the breeze. A dove came in and I shot once and missed. Couldn't take a second shot because I would've dropped it where I could never retrieve it, but I didn't have time to fuss over that,  because the field exploded. Wave upon wave upon wave of quail came speeding out of the field, flying straight over my head to get back into the triangle.

I laughed and laughed and laughed - at myself. They had completely infiltrated the field in front of me while I was scanning the skies. Good thing they weren't armed - I'd've been dead.

The next afternoon - Labor Day - was even slower. I was wearing my Sport Ears - hearing aids that amplify most sound, but cut off high-decibel sounds like gunshots - and I spent most of the time just listening to sounds around me. The whinny of a horse that sounded so close I was sure he was about to step on me. A guy running with his dog along a distant ditch, yapping so much that he had to be on his cell phone. The liquid burblings of the quail in the triangle. The crunch of ... people? Behind me in the triangle?

Had to be, but I didn't turn around. They were probably scavenging for junk, and I was content to keep scanning the sky in front of me.

I'd fired only one shot so far - suh-wing and a miss! - but just before sunset, a dove came in. Stand, shoot, thump. I marched quickly into the field straight in front of me, but there was no need for speed - he was dead. When I turned around, bird in hand, I saw deep in the weedy triangle two men, alert and upright as prairie dogs, staring at me, bug-eyed. I suppressed a giggle.

Turns out they were the beekeepers. I'd heard them, but I'd kept so still that they'd had no idea I was about 20 feet from them.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you!"

Man, I hope they didn't get stung.

I went out again yesterday, this time with Jesse, one of my students who's interested in learning to hunt. It was still slow, but a useful experience. One dove came in, and I rose to shoot, then dropped back down.

"I would've muzzle-blasted you if I shot," I explained. Jesse's an Iraq vet. The last freakin' thing he needs is a muzzle-blasting.

Another came in, and I shot once, then stopped when it arced in a bad direction.

"Why didn't you shoot again?" he asked.

"I would've dropped it in these weeds, and I'd never find it."

Finally one came in perfectly. I shot once and dropped him about 15 yards away at the edge of the triangle. I bolted out of my little weed blind to get him - again, stone dead, no need to rush - and when I turned around, there was Jesse, following me. He wanted to see.

I handed the bird to him - warm, limp, blood dripping from his beak.

"Wow, you shot him in the head!"

That was it. No more birds came in where I could shoot without blasting Jesse or dropping a bird where I couldn't find it, so we just talked as the sun dropped.

With just a few minutes to go, I turned toward the field and saw a cottontail ambling right to left on the little dirt road lining the triangle. Ten yards in front of me.

Cottontail! I'd just eaten the last of my cottontail from summer hunting. I wanted another.

I stood to shoot, but the bunny got that "Oh shit!" look on his face and bolted. I still had a shot, technically, but I would've had to shoot across Jesse to get him, so I sat back down and just laughed.

When the sun dropped below the horizon, we picked up our stuff and went back to the car. I drove Jesse back to his house and showed him how to pluck and clean a bird. Showed him how easy the feathers come off a dove. Had him squeeze the bird's crop so he can see where it stored seed.

I cut off the bird's butt and started pulling stuff out. "This is the gizzard - it grinds seed. Feel how hard it is - it's a really strong muscle."

Jesse squeezed it. Then I handed him the heart. "The cat would love that!"

Turns out his kitten didn't love it, but she was absolutely thrilled with the bird's head, which she batted happily across the porch.

Then I handed Jesse the liver. He'd told me he loved liver. He popped it straight into his mouth. He said it tasted like clotted nosebleed, which, strangely enough, he found likable.

We went inside the house to rinse the bird. It was beautiful, perfectly shot - I'd hit only the head. "Want it?" I said, offering it to him.

"Yeah!"

It was funny: I went into this season thinking I'd have a huge stockpile of doves by now, that I'd be firing up the grill to eat 'em up so I could go out and hunt more without going over my possession limit. But the way things are going, I won't even have a single day's limit by the end of the day Sunday, which will be my last chance to get out before the season closes.

What I have stockpiled instead, though, is a series of vivid memories that I've been savoring as much as the fleeting ecstasy of grilled dove.

The memories last longer.

And there'll be another chance to fill the freezer next year.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

It's Sept. 1. Do you know where your blogger is?

Today should really be a national holiday. It's the start of dove season in pretty much every state that allows dove hunting, which now includes Iowa, thank you very much.

So, do you wanna know what I'm doing right now?

Just click on over to this month's "Butt, Belly, Beak, Bang" column in Shotgun Life and I'll tell you.

You'll also get to read the story I've never told on this blog: The story of my first dove hunt ever, which went even worse than most of my first hunts have gone. It's a memory I'll cherish forever. You'll see why.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Dove season? Already? Ack!

I went to the range Sunday to shoot a little skeet - my last chance to polish up before dove season starts on Thursday - and while I didn't totally suck, I had to concede that I wasn't as sharp as I was this time last year.

For a while, this really bummed me out.

Last year, my extensive time at the range served me so well: I had my best dove season yet, and my best duck season yet too. I mean, I shot more ducks last year than I did my first four years of hunting combined.

The thought of backsliding because I couldn't make enough time for the range was discouraging. I mean, I had a good excuse: I was traveling with Hank on his Hunt, Gather, Cook Culinary Mayhem Tour this summer. But somehow I doubt that'll make me feel better when I go on my first big missing streak this fall.


Hank tried to reassure me. "I think you'll be fine when the season starts - you'll snap into it," he said.

Hmph, I thought. You wouldn't know that from some of my misses today.

That was yesterday. Today, I didn't have so much as a minute to think about it, because it was the first day of school. After three months off, it's crunch time.

And the start of my semester is especially frenetic, because I manage the campus newspaper. It's not just a class with a new roster; it's a business that re-opens twice a year.

There's hiring paperwork to handle, and there's always someone who forgets to bring in vital documents (no problem, Sweetie, it's just federal law for me to get this stuff). There are problems to solve, like the fact that our golf cart, which we use to deliver the paper, won't start (a million thanks to the automotive guys on campus who came and towed it away - with another golf cart!). And, of course, there's the usual last-minute cajoling, trying to get the young rockstars of our major to commit to a job that's way more work than any 3-unit class should ever be (please, please, please ...).

But it's my sixth year of this, so while individual challenges may be new, I've learned to handle them with more aplomb. No crisis here, folks. I know the drill. It all just falls into place. More quickly and easily than ever before, in fact.

You wouldn't even know I'd taken three months off.

Wait. Maybe Hank is right - maybe I will just snap right back into dove season. It's going to be my sixth year of hunting, too. It's not like the last five seasons of experience is going away.

And besides, attitude is everything.

I mean, I'm sure I could talk myself into shooting like crap when I head out for my first dove hunt of the year.

But I'd rather tell myself, "Thank God dove season is almost here!" I'm going to hunt when I can, bring home what I'm lucky enough to hit and fire up the grill to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Yep, I think it's going to be a good season.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

Coyote crap, a stranger's off-the-cuff comment, and the problem with 'sport' hunting

I had about a dozen errands to run this morning, and one of them was a visit to my pharmacy in Folsom. No more than two steps out of my car, I spotted a dung heap on the pavement.

Dog? Nope. I could see from the fruity contents that it was coyote poop - no surprise, given that my medical center abuts some undeveloped land with plenty of connections to waterways.

No more than two steps after that, I heard a woman farther back in the parking lot exclaim, "That's a coyote!"

Damn, she could tell from there?

No. I looked up and she was pointing. There was a young 'yote trotting down the sidewalk adjacent to the medical center.

"He'd better get out of here before he gets dead," she said, and I agreed as we started walking toward the building's entrance.

"I like coyotes," I told her. "I'm a hunter, but I'm not interested in killing them."

"You're a hunter?" she said, starting to size me up, as I did the same with her. She was, like me, a middle-aged white woman, typical suburbanite.

I nodded.

"For meat or for sport?"

I grinned. Thank you, God. You couldn't have sent this woman to me at a better time.

"For meat," I told her. In the remaining steps of our shared path, we discussed various types of waterfowl's tendencies to mate for life. She really hoped I didn't hunt geese; I admitted that I did. Then we parted company with a couple pleasant have-a-nice-days.

Why was I so happy she said "for meat or for sport?" Because she perfectly illustrated a point I've been making recently over at Tovar Cerulli's Mindful Carnivore, where there's been a spirited discussion about the merits of calling hunting a "sport."

I was going to drop this anecdote in a comment over at Tovar's place, but I realized that while I have made many comments about how much I hate the term "sport hunting" on this blog and on others', I have never written a post devoted to the subject.

This chance meeting with a stranger gave me an excuse to rectify that. Plus, it gave me the chance to start a story with a description of coyote feces, which not only satisfies my need to be unusual, but also provides a point of contemplation for people who like to read deeply into writers' messages.

Time to get to the point: For this woman, there were two types of hunting: You either hunt for meat, or you hunt for sport. The two are mutually exclusive. Based on my extensive monitoring of what non-hunters say about hunting, I believe she represents a LOT of non-hunters.

That, in a nutshell, explains my loathing for the term "sport hunting" as a description for what hunters in America do. Non-hunters - who constitute a vast majority in every state in the U.S. - often hear "sport" and think we're just killing for shits, giggles and heads on our walls. (Some people do, in fact, hunt just for thrills and heads. But I've found them to be an extreme, albeit highly visible, minority.)

Anti-hunters hear "sport" and say, "It's not a sport if the animals don't have guns, too."

I just don't see how clinging stubbornly to this term does us a damn bit of good.

I have heard a lot of defenses of the term "sport hunting." My good friend Phillip has argued - lucidly, as always - that hunting is recreation for most Americans. We don't have to do it. We don't hunt just for meat; we hunt because we enjoy it.

While I prefer to turn that argument around and say, "We don't have to get our meat at grocery stores," I still have to agree that Phillip is essentially correct, and very honest, in his assessment. Hunting is something most of us choose to do in our free time, not something we are compelled to do.

But I still don't like "sport."

I also know that "sport hunting" was used more than a century ago to distinguish between that notion of recreational hunting and "market" or "commercial" hunting, which we don't do anymore because that was wiping out game species. We still see vestiges of these mutually exclusive terms in fishing: it's either commercial fishing or sport fishing.

Even so, I think the fact that "sport" means something entirely different - and entirely negative - to people who aren't part of the hunting community makes it a poor word choice for us.

I'd always read and heard that sport hunting v. market hunting was the origin of the term, but over on Tovar's blog, Jim Tantillo informed me that there was a deeper history of the term, tying it to concepts of fair chase. Here's an excerpt:

The ancient Greeks hunted for recreation and had a concept of “sport” that went along with it. Sport is where the rules of “fair” chase come from. Greek hunters were critical of later Roman hunters who hunted in so-called “Oriental fashion,” i.e., from elevated platforms, simply waiting to sluice animals as they were driven past the platform. This offended the Greek sensibilities of what was fair/unfair.

Fast forward to the middle ages, and you see fair chase developed in mature form and associated with honor and chivalric behavior generally. Again, hunting as a highly ritualized activity with arbitrary rules designed to restrict the hunter’s advantage–as opposed to poaching with crossbows, sluicing animals in mud wallows or water, etc.–basically is present in virtually all aspects by the 12th or 13th century.

This did not change my opinion. I don't think that non-hunters hear "sport" and think of noble Greek hunters, as opposed to lazy Roman hunters. And personally, I prefer commonsense rules (e.g., the North American Wildlife Conservation Model - the very basis of modern American hunting laws) over arbitrary ones.

In short: I don't care about the history of the term, recent or ancient. I don't care if it's being misused, or unjustly maligned. The reality is that people who aren't familiar with hunting hear "sport" and think, "Ew, that's disgusting. Why would you kill living beings just for sport?"

Language changes. Words we love take on different meanings over time. That's when we retire them - which is precisely what we should do with the term "sport hunting."

© Holly A. Heyser 2011