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I know you yankees think of robins as springtime fowl, but they winter down here and are excellent table fare. I remember this recipe from when I was a kid and my job was gathering the robins with my Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

First you pluck the robins then gut and de-head them. Wash well and go back over to make sure you get all the pin feathers off. You can spin them over a gas flame to burn the pin feathers off if necessary.

Then take a cast iron dutch oven and melt half a stick of real butter and about an equal volume of extra virgin olive oil. When nice and hot, saute' down one finely chopped white or yellow onion along with a few pressed in garlic cloves....saute' until soft and starts to get dark. It usually takes about 25 minutes over med. heat, but keep stirring constantly to keep from burning. If it gets too thick, add more olive oil - you want to end up with a thick dark paste. Now add about half a small can of tomato paste and stir in well, saute some more until the "red" is gone from the mix, and set aside.

Now take a cast iron skillet and melt a little butter and olive oil, just enough to wet the bottom....dust the robins with gneeral purpose flour and brown them in the skillet....you may have todo several batches.

Now heat your onion, garlic & tomato sauce back up and taste it....if it needs some salt, slowly add sea salt until its right to your taste...now add some white wine and let that cook down some, then add a little chicken stock to thin out the sauce and add the robins. The goal is to cook the robins down in a thick dark gravy. Slowly cook them on a high simmer for about an hour then serve over toast points with a green salad. A nice white wine too.

Heading to the camp for a few days, where the robins are thick.

UV

hummm, just saw my first one this year yeasterday, here robin, robin

carens a bird brain and a lot of birds are there for the taking....if i want to get divorced.

just reading that made my mouth water. i'm sure you have a fine recipe for squirrel. they have invaded the eaves of the house and just might end up dead. red ryder you say?

Charlie, If you can't find a robin, you can substitute a pigeon.

Harv...

Don't laugh! My stepfather worked on boats on the Great Lakes during the Depression. He and one of the deck hands used to steal a couple of cans of tomatoes and take a flashlight at night and go into the grain elevators and catch a couple of pigeons. Pigeon soup! Mmmmm good!

I believe in Europe Pigeons are known as Squab.

In NY City Pigeons are referred to as flying rats. NOw with a UV recipe for rats we could feed the homeless and rid the City of those big Subway rats that are about the size of an overweight Alley Cat.

You know, how one can't love UV I cannot imagine. I was regailing a crew today about the one time he was putting on a continuing ed class or something at Southern U and the piles of chicken and watermelons. I believe they were called something..pickles. And then there was the capital murder case when "Clarence" happened to soften the whore up with the tire iron. Some men tell stories, others try hard to pass them along.

UV you have most certainly enriched my life. Yo' frend-Tomas

You take the baby pigeon out of the nests, not the adult birds.

Don't laugh, I was in a restaurant in Damascus, Syria back in the 60's and on the menu was "Birds (12)". My cousin ordered them and sure enough, out on a plate came a brace of 12 roasted sparrows/robins (?) heads and all.I asked him how they were and his answer was "crunchy".

Me & the Bride were in a fancy restaurant in Zermatt, Switzerland once and I ordered off the German menu acting smartass, ordered something with a long name, the waiter sorta shrugged, but said nothing.....this "thing" came out that looked like a chuck of blubber, all quiver-y......I stared at it and the waiter said in perfect English: "Pig's Trotter"......whatever the crap that is....I left it quivverin' and helped the Bride eat her lamb chops. Anybody know what is a "Pig's Trotter"?

And oh yeah Randall, you want the squrrell sauce piquant or the jambalaya recipe?

UV

Usually split lengthwise cut pig's foot. Gellatinous on the open split side. Those who like them really do. Most don't.

Thanks Walt.....us Coonasses pride ourselves in eating strange stuff, but this was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on a plate. I can still see it quivverin'.......

UV

well...i put a mesh cage over the eave so i might not need the squirrel recipe.

i had a show in munich so i went skiing in austria for a month. i thought i was gettin the menu down and ordered what i thought was ham and eggs. what i got was ham sushi with a raw egg on it. so i picked up the plate and held it over the table candle...the waiter smiled and came back 10 minutes later with cooked food. i cant believe anyone would eat the first dish.

i always wonder bout the first person who ate an oyster.

It sure is different when you leave the good old USA. Not so bad, but on ski trip to France many years ago, one of the guys in the group ordered lobster. They brought him out a bowl that had about 50 Crawfish in it.

i always wonder bout the first person who ate an oyster.

Taste and eating habits are just evolutionary progressions. The first guy to eat anything, that would be unusual to someone today, had little concept of "unusual" and had reasoning powers only slightly greater than that of a chimp.

If you're hungry, eat. If it doesn't kill you, eat some more. The more you eat it, the less strange it is. After enough generations recognize it as valid food, it becomes a localized taste and taken for granted, even desirable.

It's only been within the past 100 years, or so, that localized taste has had the ability to travel extensively & encounter food items of other far away localities, bringing about the concept of Bizarre Foods and other culture shocks.

And then along came reality TV and Andrew Zimmerman...

A friend using his high-school French in Paris to impress his new bride tried to order orange juice for breakfast and got an artichoke. Only the arrogant Americans. Did you see the new Sports Illustrated's cover girl on the Today show? She is from a small town in rural Russia and speaks English better than most of us; and we wonder why the rest of the world thinks we're ass holes.
But I digress.
Vic, I thought that, "first you make a roux."

mikey...OK its my first day in germany and look....there's a mcdonalds.....i can do that even if i don't do it here. my girlfriend and i go in and its kinda like a deli with a display case counter. there are some pre made chicken sandwiches so i point at one and put my hands in my armpits and flap and make chicken noises. the counter girl looks at me and says in perfect english................"i'm from brooklyn you moron".


patrick.....lifes short....have dessert first.

A friend of mine in China says that , the chinese people eat everything with 4 legs exception only for chairs and tables.
My opinion when eating there is : better dont ask what is before eating or you go to bed starving.

Even here. Try a market in Chinatown. Everything's alive. Point to it and it's dead (unless you only want a part of it)!