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Passport & Plate - Squirrel and Rabbit Gumbo

USA | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 3 photos

Ingredients
1 ½ lb. rabbit
1 ½ lb. squirrel
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup lard
2 Tblspn of vegetable oil
4 cups of chopped onions
2 finely diced scallions
5 finely diced ribs of celery
3 diced green bell peppers
8 ounces mushrooms quartered
1 cup wine (usually Southern sweet wine)
3 quarts stock (chicken or pork)
10 oz Anduille sausuage cut into ½” chunks
salt to taste
2 tspn black pepper
Crystal hot sauce
2 bay leaves
1 Tblspn mexican oregano
2 tspn thyme
1 Tblspon cayenne
parsley for garnish
4 6
cups wild rice (or brown rice) for accompaniment

 

How to prepare this recipe
Cut the rabbit and squirrel into pieces. Heat ½ cup of lard in castiron
pot. Salt and pepper the rabbit and
squirrel and place in pot to brown on all sides. Once browned, set the meat aside.
Turn down the temperature on the pot, add the remaining lard and whisk in the flour, very slowly. Stir the
mixture constantly and cook for 30 45
minutes until it thickens and a dark reddish rue takes form (be
patient).
While the rue forms, Cook the mushrooms in a skillet with 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil until the
mushrooms are golden. Remove from heat.
Add the onions, scallions, celery to the pot with the rue. Cook until the onions begin to soften. Add the wine
and the spices (pepper, bay leaves, oregano, salt, thyme, cayenne). Slowly increase the heat to bring to a
boil. Then bring back down to a simmer.
Add the rabbit and squirrel meat (with bones), the mushrooms, and the sausage. Cover and cook for an
hour. Taste for seasoning after 30 minutes and adjust. After and hour. Remove the pot from the heat
remove the bay leaves and pull the squirrel and rabbit pieces from the mixutre Shred the meat and add back
to the dish. Stir.
Serve on top of wild rice with garnish of parsley or scallions or peppers.

 

The story behind this recipe
July in the Florida Everglades is not for those without firm hold upon their senses. The land and its inhabitants revel in the slow, hot dismantling of rational will and the easy company of happenstance. So when Dulie showed up one morning on the job site with a cooler of squirrels and rabbits and a well-seasoned cast-iron dutch oven, we felt little need to question his motive. The job site was a bit of high, flat land deep in the middle latitudes of the Everglades. It had been home to a central ranger station before Hurricane Andrew had peeled off the roofs of the structures and deposited them in the lake about 20 miles south. It was this roof replacement that brought myself, Dulie, and 10 other underskilled folks out into the swamp. Every morning at 7am, we would heft out our ladders and climb up on top of the wilting structures to lay down black tar that would ooze choking vapors as soon as the sun outpaced the morning. And every night at 5pm, we would pack up our stinking tar pots and spent soda cans and black boots and drive back down the highway, often to tired to say goodnight. When Dulie showed up with his cooler and pot, we had one day left of work and then we’d all move on to other jobs. Where Dulie came from, this was great cause for celebration. He had traveled from Louisiana, and he spent most of his days voicing disbelief at our crew’s ignorance of the low country food. And every day we would egg him on until the sun would unburden him of his vexation. Dulie, however, was not going to let us have the last word. So, he set up a fire pit and a prep area out of a discarded crate and a piece of plywood. And as we labored under the cyclical heat two stories up, Dulie tended his witch’s rue and wild meat and backwoods spices. After nine long hours, as the sun fell, we climbed down our ladders, spent but victorious, and Dulie greeted us with thick spiced bowls of his family’s history and a smile that spread its arms all the way to Baton Rouge.