Bear, Braised

See page 296.

Small Game. 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.

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 320.) #

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 1/2 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 303.

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 300 and 292.

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.

Rabbit, Or Hare

Remove the head; skin and draw, cut out the waxy glands under the front legs where they join the body; soak in cold salted water for one hour; rinse in fresh cold water and wipe dry. It is better, however, unless the animals are quite young, to parboil them for about fifteen minutes with salt, pepper, and an onion. Rabbits are not really good to eat until several days after killing.

To fry: parboil first, cut off legs at body joint, and cut the back into three pieces. Sprinkle with flour and fry brown on both sides. Remove rabbit to a dish kept hot over a few coals. Make a gravy as follows: Put into the pan a small onion previously parboiled and minced and add one cup boiling water. Stir in gradually one or two table-spoonfdis of browned flour; stir well, and let it boil one minute. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Pour it over the rabbit.

To roast in reflector: cut as above, lay a slice of pork on each piece, and baste frequently. The-rabbit may be roasted whole before the fire.

To bake in an oven: stuff with a dressing made of bread crumbs, the heart and liver (previously parboiled in a small amount of water), some fat salt pork, and a small onion, all minced and mixed together, seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and slightly moistened with the water in which heart and liver wrere parboiled. Sew up the opening closely; rub butter or dripping over rabbit, dredge with flour, lay thin slices of fat pork on back, and place it in pan or Dutch oven, back uppermost. Pour into pan a pint or more of boiling water (or stock, if you have it), and bake with very moderate heat, one hour, basting every few minutes if in pan, but not if in Dutch oven. Prepare a gravy with the pot juice, as directed above.

Rabbit is good stewed with onion, nutmeg, pepper, and salt for seasoning. Also curried, after the manner already described.

:I The rabbity taste can be eliminated by putting a tablespoonful of vinegar in the water in which the rabbit is boiled. Hard boiling will toughen the meat; allow it to simmer gently for one or two hours. When tender add a minced onion and some bacon grease to the liquor and place in the baker to brown.

" The Germans prepare rabbit in a more ambitious manner, but one that well repays. The disjointed rabbit is simmered until tender. Pour the meat and liquor into a dressing made as follows: Fry until brown three or four pieces of bacon which have been diced. Add to this a tablespoonful of flour, a teaspoonful each of sugar and salt, a tablespoonful of vinegar, and a few cloves if possible. Stir well to keep from burning.

" In both cases time can be saved by simmering the rabbit in the evening, and, on the following day, browning in a baker or serving with the German dressing." (Kath-rene Pinkerton).

Rabbits are unfit to eat in late summer, as their backs are then infested with warbles, which are the larvae of the rabbit bot-fly. |

Possum

To call our possum an opossum, outside of a scientific treatise, is an affectation. Possum is his name wherever he is known and hunted, this country over. He is not good until you have freezing weather; nor is he to be served without sweet potatoes, except in desperate extremity. This is how to serve " possum hot." —