Preparándonos para el invierno

Iba yo con cierta urgencia a darme una ducha antes de cenar cuando me encontré con la bañera ocupada. Y no era una persona lo que había allí en cueros, eran pedazos de oso pardo (grizzly), alce (el cérvido más grande del mundo), caribú (reno en Europa) y cabra. El plan era hacer salchichas al día siguiente.

Y  el día siguiente llegó y nos pusimos todos a trabajar. Empezamos deshuesando los cuartos delanteros del oso, que eran puro músculo. Después del oso deshuesamos alguna parte indeterminada de una cabra y lo picamos todo junto.
Con la mezcla de carne de oso, cabra y algo de grasa de cerdo hicimos una hamburguesa gigante y añadimos los aderezos de la receta de la abuela de Myron: un montón de pimienta cayena, cúrcuma, sal y algo más que me dejo. Lo amasamos todo a lo bruto junto con un poco de agua, aceite y pan. 

Una vez estábamos todos pringados y asquerosillos la masa de carne picada ya estaba lista para embutir. Utilizamos intestino de cerdo y nos costó un buen rato pillarle el truco a la embutidora, pero al final hicimos diez salchichones de oso y cabra.

A mí me tocó cortar al alce. Tardé unas dos horas en dejar la carne lista para la picadora; no entiendo cómo un animal vegano puede tener tanto músculo. La carne era tan roja y jugosa que parecía atún. Se podían sacar trozos como puños sin nada blanco. Era, además, muy tierna.


El alce no lo mezclamos con nada porque es una carne buenísima. Con ella conseguimos hacer once salchichones.
Una vez tuvimos todos los embutidos listos Myron construyó, al más puro estilo Briconsejo, un cubículo para ahumarlos. Utilizamos madera de alce, cedro y abeto que humearon durante algo más de tres horas.

Dejamos los salchichones toda la noche a la intemperie, ya sin humo, y cuando fuimos a recogerlos tenían todos tan buena pinta que nos comimos uno de cada para desayunar (se hornean y luego se les da un susto en la sartén). Habían quedado muy ricos.
Para celebrarlo nos fuimos a cenar al bosque con las motos de nieve. Subimos a una pequeña colina y los niños hicieron una hoguera en la que hicimos “smores”. Se ponen nubes en un palo y se acercan al fuego. Esto hace que el interior se deshaga a la vez que el exterior se hace crujiente. Una vez la nube está lista se pone un poco de Nutella en una galleta, se pone la nube encima y se tapa con otra galleta. Ese bocadillo de Nutella y nube se llama “smore”.


Lo de ir a la cima de una pequeña colina no fue por capricho. Llevábamos las motos cargadas de trineos y tablas para deslizarnos pendiente abajo. Los niños y nosotros nos pasamos el rato lanzándonos pendiente abajo haciendo carreras con los trineos mientras Myron iluminaba la bajada con la luz de la moto de nieve, con la que nos pasaba a buscar una vez estábamos todos abajo y nos volvía a llevar hasta arriba. Muy buen servicio de taxi.
Enrique & MarinaSTOCKING UP THE PANTRY
Enrique really needed a shower after, maybe, a week when he found the bathtub engaged. No, it wasn’t a naked person in there but frozen chunks of grizzly bear, moose (the biggest cervid on Earth) and mountain goat. He quickly remembered that we were going to make sausages the day after. And decided to delay the shower for after that.

The next day came and there was work for everyone. First Myron showed the right way to carve bear and goat pieces. Bear legs were definitively the part with the most meat and the slowest to chop. Goat thighs and other parts were smaller and had less meat and more fat, which got discarded for the sausages in this case. Both meats got grounded together twice, not before solving a few problems with the machine which happen to not be as great as Myron had been told when he bough it. 
After the grinding, we added a little bit of pork fat and formed a giant burger. Following Myron’s grandmother’s recipe we added cayenne pepper, turmeric, salt, pepper and other species. The raw meat got kneaded for a bit with some water, olive oil and bread crumbs. 

That was a pretty greasy and rather unappetising job but after it, the meat was ready to roll. We had pig’s intestines to be stuffed so the outer part would also be edible. The press turned out to be a bit tricky (probably not as much as the grinder) but we definitively found the way to make it work and make ten long sausages with goat and bear meat. 

Enrique had to carve the moose. It took him two hours to separate all the meat from the bones. We really can’t understand how a vegan animal can grow so much muscle. Its flesh look so red and juicy that seemed fresh tuna from the ocean. And the pieces were big as fists and pure red muscle. Not to mention how tender it was. 


We obviously didn’t mix moose with anything other than salt because it has such an exquisite flavour. Furthermore, we didn’t need to, we made eleven big sausages. 
When all the sausages were ready Myron built in no time a cubicle to smoke them all. For more than three hours, we burnt maple, cedar and pine wood at the bottom of the smoker that would flavour the sausages. 

The sausages were left to spend the night out in the cold but inside the smoker, now without any fire. In the morning they looked so good that we took one of each to taste for breakfast (they can cook in the oven as whole or sliced in the pan). They tasted great.
That evening, to celebrate the culinary success we went snowmobiling to the forest. The boys and Myron took us to the top of their favourite hill to slide from. At the top they have built a couple of benches around the perfect place to light a fire. That night the fire was warm and we had popcorn, marshmallows to roast and graham crackers and Nutella to make Penner style s’mores. 


Besides the bonfire delicacies, one of the snowmobiles was towing a long sleigh full of sleds and snowboards to slide down the steep hill. Even though it was already dark we spend a few hours sliding with the different toys, racing up and down while Myron lit the slope with his snowmobile and towed up the lazy ones to get down again as fast as possible. There’s no doubt that the Penner gang are professionals of winter entertainment. Enrique & Marina