How to Cook a Moose (43 page)

Shane had grown up in Western Massachusetts but spent summers in Maine, sailing with his father, and winters up in Newfoundland, hunting. He was also a trained chef who'd graduated from Johnson & Wales University's culinary school in Florida, as well as an excellent sailor and white-water kayaker and a skilled fisherman and hunter.

Naturally, these two exceptionally knowledgeable, smart, adventurous, intrepid people fell in love. “After burning out from pouring our hearts into the nonprofit, we took off to the Caribbean for those three years on our sailboat,” said Ladleah. And then, seven years ago, they put every cent they had into their house and land, their yacht-repair business, their livestock, outbuildings, and their faith in themselves. And here they were. They'd built their life from a nervy willingness to take risks and work hard, a deep desire to be self-sufficient, to work only for themselves.

“I was going to be a lawyer,” Ladleah said. “I wanted to change the world. But I discovered it's enough, it's even better, to do what I'm doing now—to live quietly in a beautiful place and work hard and build my life with my hands. Figuring out what to do every day is a process of triage: The place tells us what needs doing, what needs the most attention from us right then. I'm juggling plates all day long. I love it, I thrive on it. Some mornings it's cold, and I wake up and just dread getting out of the warm bed, putting my boots on, going outside, but then I feed the dogs and let them out and get out there and the sun is coming up and I feel the sheep's cold noses while I feed them and the dogs are with me and I'm suddenly so, so happy to be up early, with a day of hard work ahead. It's the best way to live.”

As we drove back to their place, I asked Shane and Ladleah about bear-baiting.

“I've heard both sides, and it's complicated,” said Ladleah. “Ultimately, I think I'm against the campaign for repealing the law because I don't like where it's coming from: out-of-state money attempting to vilify hunting. The biologists who are for it argue that the population has to be controlled. Also, you can't hunt black bears; they're not like
browns or grizzlies. They hunt you. They literally track the hunters. The only way to kill them is by setting up bait and waiting in a blind.”

“What about the people who say it isn't fair to hunt them like that?” I asked, thinking aloud, remembering the blue plastic bear-baiting trap and tree platform we'd stumbled on when I was mushroom-hunting with Dorcas. “I've heard people say that baiting with donuts and waiting in a blind isn't hunting at all—it's cheating.”

“Black bears are different in their habits and patterns,” said Ladleah, “as opposed to grizzlies or brown bears, who are more offensive. Black bears are more catlike—stalking, hiding. Much more elusive. Therefore, the folks who want to kill them feel the need to lure them in, in order to ensure a clean kill. In this day and age I don't get the point of bear killing myself, but some say the meat is quite tasty. But death is a hard thing no matter what, and hunting can be ugly. There is no way to make it warm and fuzzy. I am a kill-to-eat hunter, never trophy.”

“The bear's going to get shot either way,” said Shane. “But this is the way it works the best. It's actually better for the bear: It's the cleanest shot, so the bear suffers as little as possible. They die instantly. Hunting bears the traditional way is just too risky. A lot of the time, the shot just wounds the bear, and it crawls off and dies slowly and painfully.”

I listened, interested, reflecting once more on the complexities of hunting in Maine.

We stopped at a health-food store for quinoa spaghetti; Ladleah pocketed the receipt, since she was expensing tonight's meal, a recipe she was testing for Nancy Jenkins, the chef and cookbook author.

“Have you ever heard of sea moss pudding?” I asked as we drove the rest of the way back. “I found a great old book called
The Salt Book
that describes all sorts of Yankee practices—lobstering, building stone walls, snowshoes, even rum-running. And there's a section on harvesting ‘sea
moss,' which I guess is algae? They process it and make carrageenan out of it, but there's also a sort of recipe for pudding that uses cheesecloth.”

“I love making sea moss pudding,” Ladleah said. “I use the best cream and steep the algae in it after scalding the cream for fifteen to thirty minutes. Then I add the sweetener and pour it into the mold. The longer you steep it, the firmer it will be.”

“Of course you make sea moss pudding,” I said, laughing. “How did I know?”

When we got back to their house, we opened the wine I'd brought and set out the cheese and crackers. Shane and I sat at the table and Ladleah started cooking dinner while Bucky and Zubi milled around.

“They're bird dogs,” said Shane. “They point; they wear bells and go after the downed bird. There's a special relationship that exists between a hunter and his dog. There's nothing else like it.”

While the pasta water boiled, Ladleah cut turnips into tiny cubes and caramelized them in olive oil and butter in a large skillet, then added minced shallots and chopped White Russian kale, garlic, and a spoonful of the powdered Aleppo pepper she keeps in a bowl by the stove, alongside the bowls of sea salt and black pepper. “I put this stuff in everything,” she told me.

I asked Shane about white-water kayaking; his face literally alight, as if a bright fire burned in his head, he described the joy of being in a kayak alone in rushing water, the way it was like a dance between him and the river, a meditation, and a deep kind of wild fun.

We talked about hunting, his trips up north with his family, taking the ferry to Newfoundland, the guys he met up there, the hunting lodges and the experience of being out in the wilderness, looking for moose.

“We walk through a strange, marshy tundra,” said Shane. “It's like ten layers of carpet in three feet of water. You sink down with every step into this soft, spongy mass.” He added, “It's best to try for a young moose. It's the dichotomy of hunting: trophy versus meat—and I want the meat.”

Then he gave me his recipe for moose jerky, which he got from a local Maine guy who worked at the marine supply store, who got it from a hunter and native Newfoundlander who had written it down as it was told to him.

Newfoundland Hunter's Moose Jerky

1 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

2 T Tabasco (“If you're feeling really crazy, you can put in more Tabasco,” according to the Newfoundlander)

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp liquid smoke (unless you're using a smoker)

1/8-inch-thick slices of 2 lbs. moose meat, any part, cut against the grain so it's short, a cross section of fibers (
Note
: Frozen chunks of moose slice easily.)

Methods:

Dehydrator: 5 to 6 hours

Smoker: 3 to 4 hours at 275 degrees

Ladleah tossed the cooked pasta with the sauce and served it with a chunk of Parmesan and a hand grater. On the side, she served sliced, grilled moose sausage she'd taken out of the freezer to thaw that had been made by a Newfoundland hunter Shane had met on his last trip up there. The meal was amazing. The turnips, kale, and shallots melted in my mouth with the buttery, cheesy pasta. And the sausage was chewy and lean and rich and flavorful, almost but not quite spicy.

“We've tried to replicate his recipe,” said Shane. “We can never get it right, and he won't tell us what he puts in there. He makes all different kinds, but this one's the best. He calls it Wild Game Sausage. I bet he gets the flavorings from a mail-order packet called ‘Wild Game,' but I can't find it online, and I've googled it a hundred times.”

“Maybe it's Old Bay,” I said.

“Celery salt,” he said, thinking about this as he chewed. “Maybe.”

We got onto the topic of the Midcoast farm-to-table restaurant Brendan and I had visited a few months before, the one that had served $7 bowls of roasted, unhulled chickpeas and called it “ceci,” the place that gave us class rage, and whose perfect little farm had made me coin the word
Foodsneyland
.

“Oh, we go there all the time,” said Ladleah. “We're friendly with the owners. They work so hard. The chef lives and breathes her philosophies about food, and it's a truly worthy enterprise. You should go with us sometime in the off-season. We always eat and drink so well there. And the truth is, you can spend just as much money in any of the other area restaurants, but get fooled into a false economy.”

I told her about our pink-cheeked, didactic waitress that night, who seemed to have drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid.

“She was probably just new,” said Shane. “Really, go back, go with us.”

Now, in addition to bear-baiting, I was given good reason to rethink my strong initial knee-jerk reaction to one of the most popular
restaurants in Maine. I promised Ladleah and Shane that Brendan and I would meet them there, one fall weeknight, and give the place a second chance.

Ladleah Dunn's Moose Meatballs avec Black Trumpets