The Connoisseurs Game Meat Challenge

While one might say that The Connoisseurs are a diverse group with their own interests, nothing brings us together like our love for cooking.

Potlucks, celebrations and holidays are certainly good occasions for us to get together and prepare some tasty treats but nothing brings out our best like a little competition.

For The Connoisseurs cooking challenges we often cast aside recipes and conventional wisdom to tackle new dishes well outside our every day experience.

With each challenge the race has gotten closer, making it impossible to determine a clear winner or loser until the votes are tallied up.

This time around we chose a theme that none of us have much experience in, that being the preparation of game meats. Drawing up a list of mammals, reptiles and birds from a website that specializes in game we each secretly chose our animal or animals and started to ponder what dishes we could prepare. Thankfully, we do have a few places here in Boston where one can get exotic meats such as Savenor’s Market and Super 88.

On game day we all showed up extra early to get our prep work done. Some had started the day before, for example Tom marinated his meats overnight and Javier prepared duck confit ahead of time. Jon had a good idea as to what he was making and the ever versatile Michael planned much of his meal that very morning.

Before any guests had arrived The Connoisseurs where busy with preparations, such as Javier putting together a lamb stew

while Tom crusted bear meat with a biscuit like mix or flour, butter, and dried mustard

and put a savory rub on his wild boar.

Meanwhile Michael soaked quinoa

and started to prepare a syrupy mix of fresh and dried fruits for a sauce.

Jon skewered his quails and chopped tomatoes and garlic for the sauce.

After a while the challengers had laid all their cards on the table and the dishes started to really come together. Jon was baking quails to serve with a tomato sauce made richer by a touch of white truffle butter and smoked salt.

Tom was preparing two game meats, roast black bear with a Scotch cream sauce

accompanied by roasted root vegetables being the main dish

with sweet & savory spiced wild boar loin on a bed of buttered spinach on the side.

Javier had a cassoulet bubbling away in a crock pot

and some collard greens stewing on the stove.

Finally, Michael prepared a tangy and spicy quinoa salad full of red onions and cilantro which would act as the base on which he would lay down broiled venison and yak dressed with a tangy wild berry reduction.

In the end The Connoisseurs scrambled to get their dishes ready to serve in rapid succession, since nobody wanted their dish to be cold when it reached the judges plates.

Jon started out with halved quails in sauce, overall quite delicious and earthy despite the tang of the tomatoes.

This was followed by Tom with generous portions of well-roasted bear and wild boar meat with spicy root vegetables and spinach.

Next, Javier served his Southern-flavored cassoulet on a slice of toasted French bread with a side of collard greens and coarse ground mustard housed in a shell of translucent onion.

Lastly was Michael with his delectably sweet and sour salad, topped with roast venison and yak, and full of surprises.

For this event we decided to ask voters to give their favorite dish 4 points while their least favorite ended up with a single point.

With 11 tasting judges (including The Connoisseurs themselves)

there was a total of 110 points to be distributed amongst the contestants.

After counting the votes these where the results:

Michael in fourth with 18 points.

While his dish was extremely well-constructed the meat ended up a little tough and the salad’s extremely diverse flavors failed to harmonize for some of the tasters. Still, it was extremely refreshing and the sauce itself was nearly perfect. The Connoisseurs still hold out hope that Michael will one day bottle the stuff for the mass market and hopefully, when that day comes, he’ll set aside a case of it for each of us.

Jon in third with 27 points.

The tasters were blown away by the texture and flavor of the pieces of quail. The flavor of this diminutive bird was enhanced to perfection and everybody enjoyed the succulent tenderness of the meat. Unfortunately, many found the sauce to be lacking something, perhaps a little sweetness to combat the acidity of the tomatoes. Additionally, some felt this dish bore too many similarities to Jon’s second-place-finishing offering in the unpublished Mexican Cookoff of 2006 where he made a similar dish with chicken. Still, overall, the most common complaint is that tasters wanted more, and that’s rarely a bad thing.

Tom in second with 28 points.

If we would have had to vote for the most unique experience of the night, surely our first taste of bear would have won. The meat was incredibly rich and baked to juicy falling apart perfection. Unfortunately the root vegetables it was served with where underdone and over-spiced, although still quite tasty. The side of wild boar loin was good but some felt it was overpowered by the cinnamon and fennel seed in the spice crust. Overall it was a great and unique experience that comes with some serious bragging rights.

Javier in first with 37 points.

The cassoulet was modified to give it a Southern flavor with smoked sausage and generous portions of paprika, cayenne and Crystal hot sauce. Served ‘upside down’ on a French bread crouton and accompanied by a side of collard greens with French stone ground mustard, most tasters couldn’t get enough of its comforting garlicky taste. Still, unfortunately, the onions where a bit tough and cold when presented and of course duck is probably the most domesticated game meat on the market.

Free of their duties, the tasters took advantage to serve themselves seconds and thirds of the various dishes presented and soon all that was left of the event where fond memories

and piles of greasy plates left behind for Tom, our generous host, to clean up the following day.