Ptarmagin dinner

Well, I resisted.

I was at my favorite Stockholm market and managed to soldier by the dry-aged beef and found, instead, dry-aged ptarmagin. However, "dry-aged" is the wrong term for wild birds. No, these ptarmagin were, well, "well-hung":



Even raw these ptarmagin had the hard-to-miss funk of aged wild game. On top of that, though, they also had a faint smell of thyme which apparently is due to their diet.

On the way out I noticed a bowl of this year's harvest of vendace caviar. Vendace caviar is a delicacy year-round here in Sweden. However, it's even more so when during its short season and available fresh and never-frozen. I ended up buying about 3 ounces:





Once home, I made a quick appetizer of the caviar.

Ingredients:



Creme fraiche, red onion, vendace caviar, dill, potatoes and a lemon

I started by grating the potatoes and squeezing out their excess water. I then fried a layer of potatoes in a mixture of butter and oil:



I then served the hot pancake with the caviar, a sprinkle of diced red onion, chopped dill, a healthy dab of creme fraiche, a little lemon juice and black pepper:



Wonderful stuff. The fresh caviar is firmer and not as salty as the frozen stuff. Honestly, the potato pancake is overkill and fresh vendace caviar is probably best served simply with the onion, dill and creme fraiche.

Appetizer out of the way, it was time for the ptarmagin. The ingredients (basically):



Potatoes, the ptarmagin, one root of celeriac, butter, milk and brussel sprouts.

I started by cubing about half of the celeriac and boiling it in salted water. I added the peeled potatoes to the pot after the celeriac had boiled for about 5 minutes. I then briefly blanched the brussel sprouts.

I didn't really want to mess with the natural flavors of the ptarmagin so I simply smeared them with butter and salted and peppered:



The birds went into a hot oven (450 degrees) for about 15 minutes. As they roasted, I riced the cooked potatoes and celeriac before mixing them with butter, creme fraiche, a little milk and salt and pepper. The brussel sprouts ended up in a pan with butter, salt and pepper and a healthy (2 teaspoons) pinch of sugar.

The finished ptarmagin got a long (10 minute) rest...



... before carving:





The legs and carcasses were saved and thrown in the freezer to make a future soup out of.

The served dish:



The ptarmagins tasted wonderfuly wild and "hung". Some bites were liver-like and even slightly bitter, others mild and tender. The more well-done meat was noticably tougher and I'll probably roast my next ptarmagin for only about 12 minutes. All of the meat had a distinct herby and thyme-like flavor. The lightly sweet and carmelized brussel sprouts were a wondeful accompaniment.

Their wonderful flavor aside, I ended up with a few bits of solid evidence that these were, in fact, wild birds:

Bridgestone, that red meat looks delectable! Sorry I didn't post earlier, but your post is very timely considering the current conversations about hung pheasant and hunting partners.

I looked up ptarmigan (which somehow I recognized to be a bird before I opened the post) looks like it's closest to a grouse.

Bridgestone wrote:

Bridgestone,

You always leave me with such few words. Wow. Wow. Bravo!

Sharon

You always leave me with such few words. Wow. Wow. Bravo!

No need to say much when the words are so kind!

Thank both of you!

Bridgestone wrote:The ptarmagins tasted wonderfuly wild and "hung". Some bites were liver-like and even slightly bitter, others mild and tender. The more well-done meat was noticably tougher and I'll probably roast my next ptarmagin for only about 12 minutes. All of the meat had a distinct herby and thyme-like flavor. The lightly sweet and carmelized brussel sprouts were a wondeful accompaniment.

Bridgestone, your post is inspirational - retroactively, in this case. Your description of the taste brings to mind my first taste of wild pheasant as a child.

The pheasant was dark-fleshed and liver-y and rich and bitter just as you describe. My mother and brothers found it off-putting, but I was enthralled, and polished the whole carcass off in a manner that might have scared an onlooker. Could our shared response to this meat be atavistic? Even now, I recall while eating that pheasant, a sense of something long-craved yet previously unknown.

What a great mystery is the appetite for things untasted!

So, Bridgestone, we will have to take your word (and pictures) for it, in view of the scarcity of ptarmigan in these parts. Thank you for another virtual feast.

The homepage on my computer is a Netvibes page which includes a widget displaying Flickr images that include the tag "foodporn." (Try to imagine how little sense that sentence would have made 15 years ago.) I saw these weird, purple-cabbage-colored birds in it, and thought, what the hell are those? How delightful that a few minutes later, just by chance, I knew exactly what they were. Great post, as always.

Mike G wrote:The homepage on my computer is a Netvibes page which includes a widget displaying Flickr images that include the tag "foodporn."

Does anyone else see a golden opportunity here? Mike, you might want to keep the kids away from the computer this week given the imagination and Flickr tagging skills of some of our members.

Bridgestone - beautiful! I don't know if you've ever seen "Back to the Future III," but Seamus McFly had the same proof for his wild birds. Good stuff.

Great looking post as always; I wouldn't have been able to resist polishing off the whole bird (legs included).

Gonna have to wikipedia the caviar to find out what type of fish the roe came from.

Wild game - awesome.

Jay K wrote:Wild game - awesome.

Awesome is not a word I often use, but in this case I find it wholly appropriate.

Jay K wrote:Gonna have to wikipedia the caviar to find out what type of fish the roe came from.

Bridgestone wrote:On the way out I noticed a bowl of this year's harvest of vendace caviar.

Already got you on that one, JayK (click on "vendace" above)! Not the world's sexiest fish (especially compared to a sturgeon) but their roe is wonderful. These fish aren't endangered in these parts (nor are they harvested for anything else) so the relative high price of their roe (about 25 USD for that serving) must be due to the small amount of roe one gets per fish.

Thank you everyone for the very kind words!

I did some exploratory nibbling around the rest of the roasted birds and discovered a few things. The legs were extremely tough. So tough that fear of discovering more birdshot in them kept me from chomping down hard enough to make work of them. They'll go in a future stock/soup. The slight bitterness I sometimes noticed in the breastmeat was amplified greatly as I nibbled on a back (one of my otherwise favorite fowl parts). It was bitter enough to make me wonder how my future ptarmagin soup will turn out. I will report back!

Just yesterday I was given two wild ducks from one my Uncle's who hunts.

I now have some inspiration as how to serve them. Not that duck and Ptarmagin are exactly the same, but some wild game and mashed root vegetables sounds really nice.

Great work as always Bridgestone.

Brandon,

Are you going to hang them? With or without cleaning first?

Regards,

Cathy -

They were given to me cleaned and frozen.