As a female chef, she’s got the looks, the shtick, the high-profile presence on cable channels and oh yeah, one other unique attribute: She prefers squirrel meat over the other protein choices available to a modern culinary artist.
She’s Georgia Pellegrini, chef-author of the new book “Girl Hunter”—Amazon.com’s Book of the Month—in which she appears on the cover armed with a pair of weapons—a shotgun and a cast-iron skillet.
“I hunt and gather myself, and hone my pioneer skills. I seek ingredients that are anchored to the seasons and a definite place. It’s the kind of food once served in simple restaurants and in homes by housewives and today by culinary artisans choosing to do the hard work required to live off the best their hands can produce.”
As something of a Rachel Ray meets Elly May Clampett, Pellegrini has latched onto a unique appeal that cuts through the unbelievable clutter of the cookbook/celebrity chef world by touting squirrel meat, an ingredient available only to those daunting enough to hike into the woods and personally “harvest” it.
But that backwoods skill aside, she makes a pair of compelling arguments to support her commitment to those pioneer skills: One is culinary, the other cultural.
As a chef, Pellegrini insists that squirrel is “some of the best meat in the woods—I’ve come to think that it may be the best meat—period.”
How so? “The phrase, ‘you are what you eat’ befits a squirrel as much it does a Spanish acorn-fed pig that are prized so highly by those with means,” she told Fox News in a one of her many book tour interviews. “When you think about it, after feasting on acorns, [squirrel] meat is nutty and sweet, buttery and tender. It can be even better tasting, and much more economical, than Spanish [pork] that sells for $170 a pound.”
Of course, any urban or suburban dweller has to ask the obvious question: You see them hanging around apartment buildings, city parks and people’s backyards. Aren’t squirrels really just big tree rats?
To a chef like Pellegrini, absolutely not.
“Squirrel hunting is more American than apple pie,” she boasts in her book. “Whole traditions have formed around these squirrels, and guns have been crafted in their honor. Few things are more intertwined with American history and tradition, and in fact, squirrel is one of the most popular game animals in the eastern United States, with close to two million hunters who annually harvest the critters.”
Turkey time
Pellegrini’s moment of truth, her transformation from chef to hunter-harvester, came early in her career, when the restaurant where she worked told her to slaughter the turkeys that were the center of the establishment’s dinner menu. She now admits that task was a “terrifying notion at first,” but eventually it became an important part of her philosophy.
“As I did it,” she wrote, “it made a kind of sense I could feel deep within my marrow, the kind that makes me want to be a true omnivore.”
And that leads to an even more important truth that she’s unafraid to verbalize: If you’re going to eat meat—certainly if you’re going to prepare and serve animal foods—you can’t be disconnected from the source of the ingredients you’re using and consuming.
“While it was remarkable to meet the food artisans who brought ingredients into the high-end restaurants I worked at, it wasn’t enough for me,” she wrote. “I wanted to take part in every part of the process; I wanted to pay the full karmic price of the meal.”
Which transformed her from city chef into squirrel hunter, someone who, as she phrases it, “learned how to follow the gentle rhythms of the woods, just as you do in pursuit of deer or on a walk in nature.”
Only on most people’s weekend hikes into the hills, they’re not packing a .22 rifle with a scope and loaded with 32-grain HP cartridges, the preferred weapon for clean, accurate head shots that don’t damage the squirrel’s meat.
Despite their urban habitats, squirrels are social animals, often living in well-developed colonies. They’re experts at foraging and hoarding, the same skills the early colonists and pioneers needed to survive and a key reason why they connect with American history. Equally important, their meat is dense, with a unique texture and a complex flavor due to their high-protein, high fat diet.
Hunting, harvesting and preparing them is how Pellegrini says she regained the connection between our food sources and our dietary choices, a connection that’s virtually disappeared in our post-modern society.
As she puts it, “Eating squirrel that I’ve harvested with my own hands makes me feel distinctly more American and undoubtedly more human.”
And as Jed Clampett would say, squirrel’s some might fine vittles.
› To learn more, log onto www.georgiapellegrini.com.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Murphy, a veteran food-industry journalist and commentator.
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