Fowl play: Cooking game birds the right way | Joe Ciringione
Sheryl and I have been learning the ropes of gourmet cooking for quite some time now. While we look forward to bringing home some freshly hunted venison this season, we’re also psyched about getting a couple of birds our way, too. The meat of wildfowl was our first attempt at cooking, having had a few birds for dinner during the holidays.
There are a lot of birds to choose from, and the details of their preparation are largely dependent on the species. Paying close attention to the species reveals a host of different flavors and meat cuts and various ways of preparation.
Our first attempt, quail (one of the few birds I am capable of shooting), has a slight gamey texture, whereas our next one, partridge, ended in a much sweeter note. Sometimes people like the gamey taste of wild birds, and pheasants are almost always prepared specifically to enhance it.
Game birds do share some traits in common when it comes to preparation. For instance, it sometimes makes excellent sense to cook each part of the bird differently, to necessitate in cutting it up differently. It’s very rare that you’d actually have to roast a whole bird like you would for domestic poultry.
Image source: bbcgoodfood.com
One of the challenges in cooking wild birds is their considerably lower fat content, which means it is easy for it to dry out. There are a lot of ways to avoid this situation, including confit, which involves slow-cooking the thighs and legs of a bird over the course of a few hours or days in fats or oils. Alternative methods include poaching, leaving the bird to cook for a few minutes so that it becomes rare, and then searing the skin.
About the author, Joe Ciringione
Learn more about Providence, Rhode Island outdoorsman and gourmand Joe Ciringione here. To catch up with what Sheryl and I have been cooking, follow us on Twitter.
Museum Taxidermy Dioramas: a Convergence of Art and Science | Joe Ciringione
The diorama found in many of the world’s impressive museums are the source of much fascination for both casual observers and aesthetes. Sheryl and I are avid appreciators of the art that goes into these taxidermy exhibits, which combine art and science in the creation of a scene that could very well be in nature.
Natural history museums have always aimed for absolute scientific accuracy in their dioramas, painstakingly recreating scenes from nature because, for a long time, they were the only way for the average person to ever see these animals and their environments. Each particular element in the design of a diorama must be painstakingly accurate to the habitat of the mounted primary specimen, down to the other specimens that would be mounted alongside it. The composition should be both artistically pleasing, drawing the eye to the main specimen, while remaining true to what happens in nature.
Details matter. Everything from the bark of the trees to the leaves are molded from (or occasionally actually are) the trees and plants native to the environment being depicted in each diorama. A lot of thought goes into details like lighting, which tends to be accurate to a particular time of day. The backdrops, huge curved murals, are often based on a real location in a specific time of year, upon which the rest of the diorama’s conditions are based.
A scientifically accurate exhibit of dioramas requires an ample number of specimens in a museum’s collection. While historically acquired from scientific hunting and collecting expeditions, most modern collections usually derive their large animal specimens from a variety of sources, among them subsistence and sport hunters, road kill specimens, and deceased animals from zoos.
And that was a moment in science and art from your host, outdoorsman, and gourmand Joseph E. Ciringione. Catch more updates from Sheryl and I on Twitter.
Joseph Ciringione at Dinner
Joseph Ciringione 
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