Restaurant Reduces Carbon Footprint by Serving Local Squirrel
squirrel meat image from The Gastronomic Diary
The Famous Wild Boar Hotel in North West England is serving up free grey squirrel pancakes to hungry diners.
The restaurant at Crook, near Windermere, in Cumbria, is giving diners the chance to try the canapes free of charge. The grey squirrels were caught in the hotel's 72-acre woodland grounds and have been prepared by head chef Marc Sanders.[from the Daily Mail]
But you don't have to cross the Atlantic to eat this gamy delicacy. With Steven Rinella's book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haue Cuisine you too can prepare a 45-course banquet that includes squirrel as one of the less exotic dishes.
Using the 1903 Le Guide Culinaire by master chef Escoffier, Rinella sets out to
shoot, fish, slaughter, raise (as in pigeon husbandry), gather and otherwise procure the ingredients for these dishes himself, with help from his fishing and hunting buddies. Rinella's girlfriend is a vegetarian, and he's aware that this project may seem distressing to some, but he offers a spirited defense of choosing to "make his own food." Rinella's year took him all over the U.S. and Canada with plenty of unusual outdoor adventures: frog gigging, eeling, "glassing" for elk, making headcheese and sparrow-trapping. Preparing the feast, with its huge list of ingredients, took more than a week, with hard-breathing last-minute tension. Some dishes worked, some didn't (e.g., Crayfish Mousse, and Elk and Antelope Kidney Pudding). This unusual memoir could serve as a tasty gift for sporting types.
