Jambolaya

This is a delicious Creole dish, easily prepared. Cut up any kind of small game into joints, and stew them. When half done, add some minced ham or bacon, 1/4 pint rice, and season with pepper and salt. If rabbit is used, add onions. Serve with tomatoes as a sauce.

Brunswick Stew

This famous huntsman's dish of the Old Dominion is usually prepared with squirrels, but other game will serve as well. The ingredients, besides squirrels, are:

1 qt can tomatoes,

1 pt. can butter beans or limas,

1 pt. can green corn,

6 potatoes, parboiled and sliced,

1/2 lb. butter,

1/2 lb. salt pork (fat), 1 teaspoonful black pepper,

1/2 teaspoonful Cayenne,

1 tablespoonful salt,

2 tablespoonfuls white sugar, 1 onion, mmced small.

Soak the squirrels half an hour in cold salted water. Add the salt to one gallon of water, and boil five minutes. Then put in the onion, beans, corn, pork (cut in fine strips), potatoes, pepper, and squirrels. Cover closely, and stew very slowly two and a half hours, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Add the tomatoes and sugar and stew an hour longer. Then add the butter, cut into bits the size of a walnut and rolled in flour. Boil ten minutes. Then serve at once.

Curry Of Game

Cut some birds or other small game into rather small joints. Fry until lightly browned. Score each joint slightly, place a little curry powder in each opening, and squeeze lemon juice over it. Cover the joints with brown gravy and simmer gently for twenty minutes. Serve with rice around the dish. (See also Curry Sauce, page 80).

Game Pie

Make a plain pie crust as directed in the chapter on Desserts. Cut the game into joints. Season rather highly. Moisten the joints with melted butter and lemon juice, or put a few thin strips of bacon in with them. Cover with top crust like a fruit pie and bake not too long; time according to size.

Squirrels, Fried

Unless they are young, parboil them gently for % hour in salted water. Then fry in butter or pork grease until brown. A dash of curry powder when frying is begun improves them, unless you dislike curry. Make gravy as directed on page 63.

Squirrels, Broiled

Use only young ones. Soak in cold salted water for an hour, wipe dry, and broil over the coals with a slice of bacon laid over each squirrel to baste it.

Squirrels, Stewed

They are best this way, or fricasseed. For directions see pages 59 and 52.

Squirrels, Barbecued

Build a hardwood fire between two large logs lying about two feet apart. At each end of the fire drive two forked stakes about fifteen inches apart, so that the four stakes will form a rectangle, like the legs of a table. The forks should all be about eighteen inches above the ground. Choose young, tender squirrels (if old ones must be used, parboil them until tender but not soft). Prepare spits by cutting stout switches of some wood that does not burn easily (sassafras is best—beware of poison sumach), peel them, sharpen the points, and harden them by thrusting for a few moments under the hot ashes. Impale each squirrel by thrusting a spit through flank, belly, and shoulder, on one' side, and another spit similarly on the other side, spreading out the sides, and, if necessary, cutting through the ribs, so that the squirrel will lie open and flat.

Lay two poles across the fire from crotch to crotch of the posts, and across these lay your spitted squirrels. As soon as these are heated through, begin basting with a piece of pork on the end of a switch. Turn the squirrels as required. Cook slowly, tempering the heat, if needful, by scattering ashes thinly over the coals; but remove the ashes for a final browning. When the squirrels are done, butter them and gash a little that the juices may flow.