Sunday afternoon, am listening to “America’s Back 40,” great Sunday afternoon program on KPFA by Mary Tilson. All my kind of music. A lot of pleasant surprises by Mary, who’s obviously got a great collection.
Also, our local radio station, KWMR has a unique selection of music.
A few days back, I drove north and took a long beach walk and returned with mussels and seaweed (for garden and food). These days I get the smaller mussels, big ones are pretty tough. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll just steam them in a little water, red wine, and chopped parsley and garlic.This time the broth turned out purple from the wine. Infusion of ocean essence.
Had a pigeon 2 nights ago. They’ve proved tough, so I hung this one for few days and it was really good. With red wine, rice, garden greens.
I just read the chapter “Aging Game Birds” in Hunt, Gather, Cook by Hank Shaw, a very good book (Rodale) on obtaining and cooking from the wild. Also was reading about cooking pigeons in Chez Panisse Cooking by Paul Bertolli/Alice Waters. They serve a lot of pigeons at the restaurant, they say. They have a recipe for making broth from the bones, which are baked or grilled, then chopped up with big cleaver and simmered an hour in light beef or chicken broth. I’m going to try it in the next day or two, with the pigeon bones and duck bones. Got to be good.
have to say, none of above of which i have eaten…
having so said, must also speculate, likley incredibly healthy and nutritious. i am such a city slicker.. and a long way from the chickens we used to butcher when i was a little kid..
however, am betting that pigeon, free range and all, so to speak, very healthy. put me in mind of a newscast i saw some time back.. there was a swarm of Locusts, i think in Israel or Egypt.. News crew/camera was out early taking video, and came upon a family from the city (early morning), collecting up bags of the Locusts. Asked why, the Dad said that spraying crews were to be out later, to kill the Locusts, and this family was there to harvest what they could. Dad said the Locusts slept at night, and were easy to fill bags early in morning. He said they spiced them up, baked at high temp in over, and were tasty and crunchy..
all good.
Exactly how does one go about collecting pigeons for the table? We're talking pigeon like in the city, not dove?
bayrider: Band-tailed pigeons, quite different from their city cousins (called "flying rats" in some circles). They are very wary, hard to sneak up on (as is necessary with pellet gun). Aged properly, they make a great meal for one.