Game
Faced with the daunting annual task of preparing the hind quarter of wild boar that our landlord carries over from across the way, grinning proudly in the doorway as he proffers the large lump of flesh fresh from the kill, baggied, along of course with the details of its demise (although, last year, it turns out that he didn’t actually shoot it, but hit it with his car).
So, true to tradition, we stare at it for awhile, make faces, then put it in the freezer until it’s officially taking up too much room, and I’ve mustered the courage to give it another go.
And turn for guidance to the most wonderful Elizabeth David.
Before I came to France, I used to gorge on the mix of sensuousness and impatient efficiency in her books; images were conjured of warm country kitchens in southern France and Italy, all stone and wood and copper, fire, fragrant steam and vegetables from the garden on the cutting block, pale light through the windows.
Now, years later, there’s a reinforced kinship with the recipes, or maybe with the mind that wrote them. She tosses them out like conversation, sprinkled with quotes, anecdotes and natural history; quantities are measured in whatever’s at hand (wine glass, clump, smatter…).
Today, we get quotes from upper crust expats:
Here, then, we ate the wild boar, shot in the precincts of the mine that very morning and baked in a ground oven by the Sarde cook […] it was a feast for an alderman.
– Charles Edwards, Sardinia and the Sards, 1889
and are told that, according to Smollett, the wild boar of Piedmont has ‘a delicious taste, not unlike that of the wild hog of Jamaica,’ instructions to marinate for 24 hours in red wine, herbs and vegetables and, the next day, as the bit of beast roasts gently, prepare the cherry sauce:
Take the stones out of a breakfastcupful of bottled cherries. In a small pan, dissolve 2 tablespoonsful of red-currant jelly. Add the cherries and a little of their juice, a scrap of black pepper, a teaspoonful of wine vinegar, a dessertspoonful of crushed coriander seeds. Simmer for 5 minutes…
It smells divine; I’m hopeful, but still wondering about the appeal of wild boar sandwiches at midnight.
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