[Sca-cooks] Game sources (bunny, venison) question

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Oct 12, 2007, at 2:28 PM, Michael Gunter wrote:

> I'm doing our Central Regional 12th Night feast and playing with  
> some ideas. Most of the feast will be pretty inexpensive so I may  
> try to spring for a couple of interesting luxury items. One of the  
> things I'm looking at is from Curye on Inglysch, "Hares in  
> Papdeyle" which is a rabbit ragout between sheets of pastry.

FWIW, I believe the recipe specifies "wafers in default of  
loseyns" (spelling may vary). I always made it with loseyns (cooked  
lasagne or even sheets of egg-pasta "egg roll" wrappers). Might be  
terrific with those cheese wafers from some of the French sources,  
but I never tried it.

For me the key is that you can still go to someplace like Trieste on  
the Italian/Yugoslavian (or whatever it's called right now) border  
and get a game ragout on a pasta called pappardelle, which is a very  
wide, lasagne-like tagliatelle, like maybe an inch or more wide. Very  
Lidia Bastianich...

> This shouldn't take too much rabbit meat for 200 diners, I'm  
> looking at 15 or so carcasses but that will cost me around $200  
> from the sources I've found. Anyone have suggestions of  
> distributors? I'm also looking for inexpensive opportunities for  
> wild game, venison or boar.
>
> Right now nothing is in concrete, I'm just playing with ideas. I  
> may combine rabbit and chicken to stretch the meat budget further.

I'd look around really carefully. Prices seem to vary greatly  
depending on your source. For me, the best deal was something like  
$1.79/lb for whole, pan-dressed wabbits (frozen, but perfectly fine  
when braised with lots of fresh herbs) on sale shortly before Easter  
(which to me seems rather perverse, but what the hey) at a local  
Western Beef Outlet. Yes, I realize New York City is really Western;  
it's what it's called. It's pretty basic, but does cater to a  
multiple-ethnicity clientele, and could carry anything from whole  
boneless beef loin shells/strips for $2.99/lb to enormous buckets of  
prepared chitlin's to weird forms of souse meat, to almost anything.  
Real smithfield hams for cheap. For me, loving a good gourmet store  
but hating the general pretentiousness levels, it's practically  
Disneyland. Now, of course, the real Disneyland would be Fairway  
Foods, which, again, has primo-quality at wonderful prices, and a  
rather surly staff that doesn't need to sell their cheese to you if  
you don't want to buy it. Not mean surly, just a bit impatient.  
"Don't know what you want or how much? Maybe the nice person on line  
behind you does. Next!" Consequently the best plan is to talk to the  
other people on line; they tend to know their stuff. I know on  
several occasions the person on line people have asked some rather  
weird questions of has been me...

I mention all this only to point out that it would be a shame to  
skimp on the bunnies because a good market got under your radar.

Adamantius