A Quick Lunch for a Busy Day
Author: Eileen Clarke - Rifles and Recipes
A Quick Lunch for a Busy Day
Eileen Clarke
Rifles and Recipes
My husband John used to be the lunch cook at our house, mostly because he was waking up and eating breakfast at 4 to 5 am and by 9:30 was hungry again, while I was just finishing my second cup of coffee and about half an hour into my morning’s work. That meant that I was frequently torn away from my computer by the tantalizing aroma of one of John’s delicious tossed-together concoctions--like this. His lunch cooking was always fast and easy to make, but never simple in flavors, which is why this recipe ended up in the Upland Game Bird Cookery book I wrote for Ducks Unlimited. That book includes all the upland birds from pheasant and forest grouse to sharptails and sage grouse to turkeys.
The trick to its quickness is to dice the meat into pretty small pieces instead of half-inch chunks, and deleting the browning step, while the addition of smoked polish sausage made it one of my favorite ways to cook a bird whose flavor I’m not particularly fond of: sharptails. Just for the record, I’ll add that we once lucked into a bunch of sharptails gorging themselves on buffalo berries. They were sweet and mild tasting, unlike their stronger favored brothers, sisters and cousins we’ve taken over the years.
No sharptails in the freezer? Pheasant, Hungarian partridge and ruffed, blue or Franklin’s grouse will work nicely, too. (Heck, even venison works.)
FYI: John is taking advantage of being semi-retired these days and sleeping in until 6, so lunch is now at a more civilized hour.
John’s Ten-Minute Soup
Serves 4
Ingredients
4 cups chicken broth
4 ounces lightly smoked polish sausage, diced
4 ounces sharptail meat, about 1/2 cup. diced
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
1 tablespoon oil
1 can (15.5 ounce) corn
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Cooking
1. In a medium-sized (3 quart) pot, bring the broth to a boil over high heat. Add the sausage, and boned meat and bring the pot back to a low boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer, and let it cook while you sauté the onions.
2. In a medium-sized skillet, sauté the onion in the oil over medium heat until the onion turns slightly brown, about 5 minutes. Add the onion to the broth. Then add the corn, and black pepper and let simmer about 5-10 minutes until the corn is hot. Serve immediately with hard rolls.
Eileen Clarke’s wild game cookbooks are on sale now at https://www.riflesadrecipes.com/406-521-0273.
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