Capriolo al Barolo

Nebbiolo Grapes

As a break from two weeks working in Germany attending trade shows, I took a (in my opinion) well-deserved two-day weekend in Italy’s Piemonte, with the very specific purpose of visiting my friend Vito Benevelli and having a couple meals at this restaurant Frandin da Vito.

I stopped by at lunch and we spent sometime talking (I was also eating) while Vito cleaned some fantastic Porcini mushrooms that would be the main meal during the evening’s dinner when I would return with my friend Patrick, for his proper introduction to the rich Piemontese cuisine, including proper tasting of its foremost wines, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo (which has a very special place in my soul), and the great Barolo.

Following dinner Patrick and I shared some of Vito’s Genipi (the home made liquor made of Alpine flowers and herbs I told you about before) and joined him for some discussion on Italian wines and Patrick started his collection of Great Italian wines.

Before we left, Vito asked me to comeback the following day (Saturday, 15^th) at 15:00 hours (that is 3:00 PM).

Next afternoon when I arrived Vito had set aside two 12 gauge over-under shotguns and a 240 Weatherby rifle, topped with a Zeiss 8X scope, and his backpack (or Zaino) with all the gear for an afternoon hunt.

We made a stop at TAV Carignano for some Elica shooting and this time I really shot badly. If Bill Berghuiss were with us, he would have shouted “Good Shot, Dick!”

After watching our friend Signor Guido win a fat poker hand with a Straight, we bid him farewell and continued our way to Barolo, and more specifically Monforte d’Alba, Vito’s birthplace and the city were his vines and cantina are located, and the vindima was in full swing.

We visited his home and as we toured his vines I was able to taste in loco the fantastic sweetness and delicate flavor of the Nebbiolo grapes, from which both Barolo and Nebbiolo wines are made, the main difference being the aging in oak barrels, one year for the Nebbiolo and at least three years for the Barolo.

As afternoon was coming to an end, and dusk began to approach, we rushed towards a local Azienda Faunistico-Venatoria, or in US parlance a hunting preserve or lease. The property was about one thousand hectares or 2,200 acres, and was a mix of luxurious riverbeds, meadows and mature woods, and there were no fences. All game is free ranging!

All over the Barolo region I saw signs announcing that there was open hunting on wild boar and foxes, but our target was the Capriolo (Capreolus capreolus), or roe deer, one of the most widespread of the Old World deer.

We parked close to one of the gates, got our gear and started walking towards one of the several meadows that dot the property. Just as we approach it I saw a large and beautiful fox moving along the one of the edges as we passed by a large number of bee hives, another sweet wild local delicacy.

We walked towards a ditch where we entrenched ourselves, got comfortable and started waiting for dusk and capriolo. Shortly after I spotted the first deer, or better saying doe, about four hundred yards away on the opposite wood’s edge. Shortly after, Vito spotted another doe with two fawns on the opposite side of the field and less than two hundred yards from us.

Over the next hour or so we had as much as eight does and fawns at a time on the field, and the fawns were clearly demonstrating why the roe deer is capriolo in Italy. They were playing and jumping around non-stop.

A nice sized doe (capriolo is quite smaller than whitetail) came to about a hundred yards of us, and with a scoped 240 Weatherby rifle from a solid rest that would have been a very easy shot, but we were after roebucks, and never pulled the trigger.

By this time I already had realized that hunting capriolo in the Piemonte is not that different from hunting whitetails in Michigan. Big bucks don’t grow big by being stupid, and they did stick to heavy cover and never came out. When it got to dark to shoot we grabbed our stuff and walked back to the car.

We then drove back to San Mauro Torinese and Vito and I had dinner together, at his place off course! And we had Capriolo al Barolo, from an animal that he had shot some days before. We polished out a couple bottles of Nebbiolo wine and I was forced into eating dessert: small pears cooked in wine and covered with a sauce made of chocolate and Amaretto and Zuppa Inglese, which is not a soup, but a delicious cake.

Before I departed Vito committed to join me next year in Uruguay for perdiz. I will be looking forward to that.

As any regional dishes, there are many subtle ways to prepare Capriolo al Barolo. This is one that looks similar to the way that Vito cooks at his restaurant Frandin da Vito in San Mauro Torinese.

Ingredients

·       800 grams (or about two pounds) of capriolo (you could replace it by venison), without fat

·       1 large glass of Barolo wine

·       1 onion

·       2 cloves of garlic

·       1 bunch of tarragon

·       2 or 3 branches of marjoram

·       50 grams of butter

·       50 grams of white flour

·       2 small glasses of Brandy

·       1 small glass of vegetable stock

·       Salt and pepper

Preparation

Cut the capriolo in cubes, keeping the bones, and place it on a dish large enough to hold it all in one layer. Add all the wine and half of the brandy, and turn the pieces after one hour. After two hours, in a way that all pieces marinated in both sides for at least one hour, spread over all the capriolo a fine paste made of onion, garlic, tarragon, marjoram, salt and pepper (personally I do not use pepper). Leave marinating for at least four hours (my friend Vito will leave it for at least 24 hours). Before cooking, dry the pieces of capriolo with paper towels. Melt the butter over very moderate heat in a large pan (I like cast-iron) adding salt and pepper. Add the pieces of capriolo and when they are well browned in both sides, put them aside. Return all the pieces to the cooking pan, covering them with boiling water. Add the flour, the remaining of the brandy, the vegetable stock and let it cook until the sauce is reduced to gravy. Serve immediately, placing the gravy over the pieces of capriolo.

Hasenpfeffer

Going for the safety of the hedgerow

I had not been in Europe since last May and I spent last week in a hotel in the outskirts of Frankfurt (Germany) while attending the AutoMechanika trade show.

It always surprises and enchants me how many European countries were able to achieve a reasonable balance between brutally urbanized and developed societies and keep a bit of nature, if not preserved, then at least “at hand”, even that close to major urban centers.

German is quite a green country, although most of the place has been heavily used, explored and at times destroyed by human interference for the last several hundred years, but there is an effort to landscape it in a way that makes most people feel at home when wandering through its fields.

That was pretty much the case last week. A couple mornings I went out for “a brisk walk” as recommended by my health coach, and rather than take the way to the city park, I just took “the less traveled path”.

I would start as dawn was breaking, and in a couple minutes I could leave most buildings behind and start to walk a paved trail around some agricultural fields, sugar beets waiting to be picked, wheat already harvested, and the alfalfa growing again for the last cut before winter sets in.

But what really caught my attention were the hedgerows that would shelter the fields and my trail from the frantic highways nearby. If I kept my eyes properly focused I could ignore the Frankfurt skyline and I could just pretend the unending noise of the uncountable trucks and cars could be a distant gathering storm.

It is fantastic the power of a couple meters wide un-mowed hedges. There were berry patches that would keep a black bear happy, if there were any in Germany, but above all was plenty of cover, and as the din morning light started to gain strength I started to see uncountable fluffy rabbits moving around. They were returning from their nocturnal frolics in the fields and getting back to their briar sanctuaries.

I generally could approach them to ten or fifteen yards, and very soon my wild heart started to dream of walking those hedges with a .22 rifle in hand (probably a Winchester Model 67A that I picked at a used gun rack for about US$ 140), loaded either with shorts or some of the new low noise sub-sonic loads, and the goal would be to gather a mess of rabbits for a nice Hasenpfeffer, the typical German rabbit stew, made famous by no other than Bugs Bunny himself (and infamous by some of his less charming sidekicks, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd).

While I can daydream as much as I want, I am not sure how the local authorities would view my rabbit safari, especially due to the fact that I did not undergo the very stringent German hunting education program (see “Becoming a hunter…in Germany”, a post in this blog from February 15^th, 2012) and would be carrying an American rifle, rather than a locally made and over-engineered one.

At one point I had to turn back to the hotel (work has a tendency to interfere with the most pleasurable moments in life), and with the morning lights much brighter now I could notice some more details. Bushes and vines were already getting tinted by the gorgeous colors of fall, red being the predominant one.

Also, the big and desirable European hares were still out in the fields, while the shy rabbits had mostly retired or were closer to the edges of the hedgerows. Apparently the hares trust their size and speed to allow them to enjoy the morning sun and are more confident to be able to outsmart or outrun the odd predator than the small bunnies.

Soon after the black crows, a protect “bird of prey”, started to fly around, tacking their murdering intensions elsewhere and completely unaware of me as a potential predator or source of danger of even nuisance.

However, I was happy to see that the beautiful woodpigeons will shy away from a person walking the fields, which indicates that some dedicated hunters still use a good load of number sixes to keep them educated and wild.

To that I must say “Weidmanns Heil” and bid you farewell!

Algoma Bear Hunt

Ursus americanus

Two years ago this week my friend Bob Scott and I came back from our first, and so far only, black bear hunt.

We hunted with Jeff Helms of Agawa Canyon Outfitters. Jeff lives most of the year in Grand Rapids – MI, but from July through September he exiles himself in Ontario, or more precisely the Algoma Sustainable Forest, about one hundred miles East of Wawa.

Some place deep inside the Algoma Forest is Half-Way Heaven, a lodge known for the price of their gas that caters for snowmobilers during the winter and hunters in the fall.

Half-Way Heaven is Jeff’s headquarters during bear season, and the owners Gail and Steve, along with Billie, the god, and John, the “nefu”, took excellent care of us, which included a long trip to the nearest town to buy chocolate milk and Oreos for my breakfast.

During fall black bears eat up to twenty thousand calories per day in order to prepare for the winter hibernation, and in order to keep the bears around Jeff keeps between twenty and thirty active bear bates, each with a tree-stand or other suitable shooting “platform”.

The carefully prepared bate is a mix of marshmallow, chocolate fudge and cherry pie filling, and every other day or so a half gallon is deposited in the bottom of a 55-gallon drum. A cover is placed on top with a heavy rock over it to prevent smaller animals from getting to the bait. Caramel is poured over the rock, and “liquid smoke” generously spread all around.

In order to estimate the size of the bear a piece of frozen beaver (courtesy of Steve’s winter trapping) hangs from a tree, and if a bear can reach it then it should be a shooter.

We got to the lodge on a Monday morning, and after proving to Jeff that we could hit a stationary target at twenty yards or so we had a light lunch and got ready to go to the stands by mid-afternoon.

Besides minimum shooting proficiency, Jeff’s require two basic pieces of equipment from all hunters; rubber boots in order not to leave human scent on the trail and “cut in contact” fixed broad heads for bow hunters.

Jeff placed me on my tree-stand around 3:30 PM, baited the barrel making plenty of noise (sort of ringing the dinner bell), and told me that someone would be back around 10:30 or 11:00 PM to get me.

Then the game of waiting began. I started counting minutes (I was advised against bringing a book as Jim, a fellow hunter, dropped his book and scared a bear away the previous year), observing squirrels and birds, and dedicating time to “philosophy”. I would look at the bate barrel frequently, but all was calm. Then some ruffed grouse came to a log not thirty feet away, opposite the bait, and I was admiring these wonderful birds.

Then, when I looked at towards the bait one more time there it was, a bear standing on its hind feet and snatching the beaver from the tree. The bear had not made any noise at all and I was not even sure for how long it had been there.

I could not take my eyes from the bear anymore. It came down on its hour paws and started licking the caramel from the rock. Suddenly it slapped the barrel and tumbled it. Then the bear walked away into the bush and my heart began to sink. But soon it returned.

The bear started to feed on the bait and as it got inside the barrel for the first time I was able to get my bow ready.

The angle that the barrel had fallen prevented the optimum “quartering away” shot, and I had to press my back against the tree to get a better angle, almost broadside. As the bear got inside the barrel once again, I pulled the bow to full draw and released the arrow.

I was so focused that I actually could see the fletching disappear into the bear coat.

The bear turned back and growled at the same time, and then ran towards the woods, but I could see it go down not ten yards away. The final below came in seconds, and there was a great silent in the northern woods.

I came down from the tree-stand, walked to the bear and snapped some pictures. Then I looked at my watch and it was 5:32 PM, and I had decision to make, I could either wait for another five hours or walk the ten kilometers to the lodge. I choose the walk.

Two hours later I faced a group of happy people having cold beers around the bonfire and asking me why I was back so soon. Had I given up?