Small Game Stew Recipe

With deer season at an end (with the rut near they are NOT good table fare these days), I've been doing a lot of small game hunting lately. My 'hunting' consists of taking along a 20 guage shotgun when I go for my hike up a mountain after work. On Monday I got a rabbit (bottom photo), on Tuesday I got 2 ptarmigan, and yesterday while I saw plenty of ptarmigan (willow ptarmigan actually) I harvested none. Rabbits (arctic hare) and ptarmigan are really good to eat too. To cook up my bounty I used a recipe Mike P wrote down for me. I think it is a old family recipe from Nebraska. I cooked up both the ptarmigan and rabbit in the same pot. Later Zoya and I decided that while both ptarmigan and rabbit are VERY tasty - Rabbit is REALLY tasty and that I need to get more of those this winter.

So here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup of Shortening
1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp dried basil (I used more)
1 clove garlic (I used a squirt of garlic from a tube)
1/4 cup of olives
1 cup of water
1/2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 cup of white wine
1 lb of sliced mushrooms (I like them sliced but Mike prefers blended in food processor)
Rabbit and/or ptarmigan (whatever you got - I'm sure it'd work fine with nutra and bobwhite or whatever too)

Steps

1) Coat ptarmigan/rabbit in flour, salt, paprika, pepper and basil. I put all them all in a big ziplock bag and tossed until the meat was well coated.
2) Brown meat in the shortening. Make sure the pan is hot when you add the meat so that it browns adequately.
3) Add garlic, olives, water, worcestershire sauce, and mushrooms and simmer for 45 minutes.
4) Turn meat and stir mixture, add white wine and simmer another 45 minutes.
5) Add more water for broth if needed and serve over rice.

I did not have an hour and a half to spare cooking dinner so I used our pressure cooker and used less water and wine and it came out great! I simmered until the mushrooms were shrunk and then added the wine and pressure cooked for 45 minutes at 10 psi. I bet this would also be a good meal to cook in a crock pot. So adjust recipe accordingly! Patrick