Game Dinner

Sunday night Eric and I went to a game dinner hosted by Jim and Deb Lepage. Scott McEnaney came up with the idea for the game supper. He thought it would be fun and helpful if everyone cleaned out their freezers of all the wild game they’d frozen over the past year so they could make room for the bounty of this year’s hunt. And indeed it was a brilliant idea. The potluck dinner everyone put together with their game was terrific.

Eric concocted a wild turkey soup with the breast of a turkey he had shot (and with some chicken carcasses, carrot, onion, celery and sweet potato), and I baked a lemon blueberry bundt cake.

Bruce Woodruff made venison bratwurst. Jim prepared an hors d’oeuvre with slices of bacon that were wrapped around a piece of duck breast, a morsel of cheddar cheese and a slice of jalapeno. Scott presided over the frying of a turkey, and he cooked Triple Baked Pheasant Num Num. Brett Ference marinaded and grilled a striped bass he caught off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Kevin Andrezejewski slaved over a fish fennel and lemon risotto with smoked trout. Robin Kadet tossed up a salad with baby greens, grapes, cheese, toasted almonds and edible flowers. There was also a mushroom risotto speckled with wild morels, a colorful vegetable casserole, strips of mule deer and elk, what looked like pulled wild boar and lots more. It was hog heaven, and I pigged out. Oink, oink.

The buffet table at the game dinner

My favorite dishes were Bruce’s venison bratwurst, Jim’s duck appetizer, the risottos and Scott’s Num Num. I had never previously tasted bratwurst and I wasn’t expecting to like it, but Bruce’s brats were phenomenal. I was also dubious of Jim’s duck appetizer. I’m not crazy about duck as it is, and the duck-cheese-jalapeno-and-bacon combo seemed random to me, but I could have easily inhaled a half dozen of those nibbles. I also really liked Brett’s striped bass (pictured above in my blog’s header.)

If you’re interested in any of these recipes, let me know and I’ll see if I can get them from the cooks.