My last porcupine story covered half the meat harvested from our recent escapade. I cooked the second half of the meat into a porcupine pie.
Armed only with the vaguest, circular advice from our trusty (and much tattered) copy of The Joy of Cooking, and scant experience making pie crusts, I attacked the project with more enthusiasm than skill.
"Mmm boy! cut me a slice of that porcupine pie! Or, just pile it on the plate there.... (Photo: Mark Zeiger)
I had a simple plan. I made pie dough and pre-baked the bottom crust. I chunked up every root vegetable at hand, beets and potatoes from last year’s garden, carrots, along with a large onion, a handful of whole garlic cloves, and, just because we have a lot of it, a bunch of chickweed. The latter made absolutely no difference in flavor, color, or texture, but it added vitamins an nutrients, I’m sure. I put all of these except the chickweed in a pot, filled it about half way with water, and set it to boil. Then I attacked the animal.
Porcupines are gristly little cusses. I deboned the leftover pieces, and chopped them fine. I should have run them through a meat grinder, which would have been much better; maybe next time.
When I finished dicing it to smithereens, I filled the bottom of the pie shell with meat, covered that with the chickweed, then ladeled the vegetables in on top. I’d considered making a sauce using Michelle’s excellent soup mix, but decided that the vegetable broth sufficed. I covered it as well as I could with the remaining pie dough, and put it in the oven at around 425°. In less than an hour, when the crust was flakey and the inside of the pie boiling, I pulled it out and served it for dinner.
It wasn’t bad! The top crust didn’t warrant photos, but it didn’t keep the pie from tasting good.