Hunters served gourmet meals at duck blind
TEKAMAH, Neb. (AP) — It’s cold and dark as a group rolls out of pickup trucks, crunches through thin snow past oodles of bird decoys and huddles into a long, rectangular box placed just so, right under the horizon, near the banks of the Missouri River. Blue light starts to brighten the sky. It’s just before 7 a.m., and the duck blind is quiet.
Anyone who’s gone on a hunt knows this drill and this scene, or one like it. But this duck blind, owned by Pheasant Bonanza, is different.
It’s heated. There’s a line of camouflaged men munching chocolate croissants and cinnamon twists and drinking hot, percolated coffee made on the blind’s two-burner gas stove. And on this morning, there will be three courses from chef Nick Strawhecker, there to participate in the hunt but also to cook the style of Italian he’s become known for at his Dante Ristorante.
“This is the greatest duck blind for eating,” said Pender native Mark Lorensen. “That’s for sure.”
It also might be the most Nebraska version of the farm-to-table trend yet. Hunters will eat local food prepared by a local chef while hunting local food less than an hour from Omaha.
“Flight to table” came about after Strawhecker met hunting guide Aaron Schroder, who led the chef on a few hunts this fall. Schroder told Strawhecker about this blind, posh by most standards, and how he regularly cooked breakfast for hunters on site, things like scrambled eggs and biscuits and gravy. Strawhecker proposed taking over the cooking in the blind one morning, and an idea was born.
The Omaha World-Herald reports the hunters each paid $250 for this daylong experience, which begins quietly with those sweets from Omaha bakery Le Petit Paris, and lots of hot, black coffee.
Schroder sits on a high stool between two long benches, each holding about four hunters, their shotguns propped in front of them, illuminated by the red glow of the whirring heaters.
Schroder, in a tan stocking cap and glare-reducing sunglasses, pokes his head just above the Duracover — a plastic, straw-like material — covering the blind’s opening. His eyes scan the sky for ducks and geese.
Around 7:45 a.m., he calls for quiet, his eyes darting back and forth over the horizon, as he grabs one of the four calls hanging from his lanyard and starts calling.
To his left, another hunter furiously waves a big black plastic flag, called a goose flag. From a distance, the motion resembles birds’ wings. Despite the effort, the birds pass.
“There’s a lot of hurry up and wait,” Schroder says, chuckling.
While they wait, there’s plenty of time to talk, and cook. Around 9 a.m., Strawhecker gets to work at the stove.
“Let’s cook some pasta,” he said.
He pours half-frozen water into a big pot and in another starts heating chicken brodo, a chicken stock, made at Dante. He seasons the brodo with fresh thyme stalks, lemon juice and salt. Homemade tortellini, each filled with boar meat — it came from a regular customer who shot the animal in Texas — lemon zest and Grana Padano cheese, goes into the water. A few minutes later, hunters quietly slurp down with plastic spoons the first course: warm, rich broth, tender pasta, hearty meat.
Strawhecker drops a rounded spoon of duck fat into a hot, heavy-duty cast iron skillet, which sizzles and smokes in the small space.
He drops rounds of tigelle, an Italian quick bread served in Bologna that’s topped with all sorts of things and served as a snack, into the oil and then sprinkles the golden rounds liberally with salt. Hunters top theirs first with local raspberry jam.
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