Cooking your catch: part two

Ideally every consumptive outdoors person would use every scrap of the animals, birds and fish shot and caught. Most do a good job of using all the meat, but to varying degrees.

Take ducks and geese for example. A hunter who intentionally leaves a game bird in the field is wasting game, which is a violation of the hunting rules and regulations.

However, the largest portion of meat on a duck or a goose is the breast. Hunters commonly skip plucking and singing the entire bird and simply remove the two breasts. In addition, just breasting the bird eliminates the need to gut the bird.

There is some meat on the thighs, legs and carcass, but the amount is slight, compared to the breasts. Plus Fish and Wildlife enforcement officers do not consider not using the legs and thighs to be wasting game.

One year I saved all of the legs and thighs from the ducks and geese shot. The result was a sizeable pile of meat. This was placed in a stock pot and allowed to simmer for a few hours.

The meat was cooled and removed from the bones. A large pot of duck noodle soup was prepared and consumed.

The effort was more labor intensive than most hunters wish to endure, but if using more of the meat is the goal, use the legs and thighs.

If a hunter is going to this length, save the water used to cook the legs, strain it and use it as duck stock, as a cook would use chicken stock.

As long as we are discussing stock, remember we have fish stock for cooking, too. At least the cooks on television use fish stock in their dishes.

Imagine this: An angler catches a walleye. She fillets the fish and ends up with two large pieces of meat, leaving two hunks of skin and a fish skeleton.

Throw the fish skeleton in the stock pot, add water and as many vegetable varieties as you like, such as parsnip, leek, celery, carrots, garlic and so on. Simmer for several hours, strain and you have fish stock.

As long as we are getting crazy with making stock, I once watched a well-known cook make shrimp stock.

So this means a cook could make crayfish stock, as well. The recipe includes a bunch of crayfish shells, along with onion, carrot, celery, garlic, chives, etc. and water. You know the drill; simmer for a few hours, strain and you have crayfish stock.

Last year my pepper plants were productive. Several dozen jalapeño peppers were washed, air dried and placed in the freezer. A few weeks ago I had a hankerin' to make jalapeno poppers, as I had never eaten one, much less made one.

I studied several recipes and settled on a mixture of cream cheese and shredded sharp cheddar cheese, with the pepper wrapped in a slice of bacon after stuffing.

The caution about wearing gloves was followed and each pepper was approached while frozen. The top was removed with a sharp knife. A small, tool with a narrow spoon on one end and a fork on the other, originally made to extract crab meat, was perfect for removing the pith and seeds.

The stuffing was easily added and the bacon put in place, with an end over the opening of the pepper, and secured with a toothpick.

The cream cheese and cheddar cheese seemed boring after stuffing six, so another approach was fabricated. A pound of ground elk was browned. When cool, the meat was pulverized in a blender to the size of fine sand.

The next three pepper stuffing mixtures were experiments, with various combinations of ingredients added to six each, such as meat and cream cheese, meat and cheddar cheese, meat and granulated garlic.

All 24 peppers were baked on a cookie sheet covered with foil until the bacon was cooked.

The results were satisfying, with all of the peppers worthy of serving as an appetizer. However, I didn't consider them the best appetizer to prepare again and again.

They were mild and not hot at all, but the problem was in the mixture packed inside. Also the bacon did not add a worthwhile amount of flavor to use again.

Work in this area will continue. The mixture will be reconfigured for a more unique flavor.

Years ago a friend introduced me to a simple and popular appetizer, which used cream cheese, shrimp and cocktail sauce. Spread softened cream cheese on a plate, sprinkle diced shrimp on the cheese, as thick as you dare, and add a topping of cocktail sauce.

Serve with crackers and provide a knife to get the appetizer from the plate to the cracker.

Crayfish can be used in any dish calling for shrimp. So substituting Moses Lake crayfish for shrimp adds a local angle to the dish.

Cooking the animals, birds and fish a person brings home from the Great Outdoors provides a chance to create innovative and delicious meals for family and friends.