Enjoyable cooking to me is an inexact thing, something that is done with a paintbrush and the pallette at hand and then almost never replicated. Creating a day long meal feels like writing a short story to me, personal art that above all should be enjoyable to the artist, but a bonus if it can be shared with someone else.
Cooking IS creativity. Repetitive tasks allow the mind wander, let the subconcious bleed through. Mixing for taste and texture requires pulling up memories, sometimes deep remembrances and making them concrete experience once more. Immersion cooking allows the cook to explore all the senses, dally through emotions and just disappear for a while.Â
The pheasant was pen raised, but the falcon caught her fair and sqare. Still this made having her for dinner more personal than an average meal. I was more worried about ruining the meat than I would ever be about a bird purchased in a store, already stripped of anything resembling its former life. How can we be thankful for a shrink-wrapped boulder of pale meat? These are the things I was pondering as I painstaking plucked a meal for the first time…an hours worth of thinking.   Â
I cooked an apricot, cranberry, apple glaze with enough cayenne to temper the sweetness, let it cool and coated the bird. Then I wrapped it in pancetta. I added cream to the glaze, more spices, almond slivers and mixed it with bread crumbs and stuffed the bird. I couldn’t tell you the measurements, how I long I cooked it, nor could I promise to ever make it again. I built the dish in careful increments of ingredients and time, but lost count of all somewhere in the rhythm. My hands were always busy making pie from fresh apples, mushroom empanadas, pouring a new glass of wine. The entire day disappeared in flow.
I served the hen with garlic mashed potatoes, aspargus and fresh cranberry sauce. She was delicious and the leftovers were even better.  I find myself most thankful for the day spent with the pheasant, a fling that was followed by a flurry of unplanned creativity. Even now, I find myself anxious to get busy writing this next novel. Perhaps I should allow myself a day to cook more often.
I remember cooking. Used to do it all the time. Seven years with a boyfriend who cooks 100 times better than I do has filled me with apathy in the kitchen.
Rebecca I spent Sunday making another game gumbo, which we shared with two falconer friends that night. Along with the batch I made in Amarillo, that makes about 5 times I’ve put this together and each one has been great. I’ll email the easy recipe if you’re, um, game….