I have to tell you, convincing my NYC friends that woodchuck was for dinner has not always been an easy task. The groundhog article by Tim Stark (this guy's gonna be huge, and his tomatoes rock!) in our October issue, about his battle with one of the chubby, brown-furred rodents, took me back to my youth. I shot my first woodchuck as a teenager and felt so awful about killing the poor creature (they're really cute and cuddly looking) that I persuaded my mother to make it for dinner, a feeble attempt to ease my murderous guilt.
But there are a few things to know before butchering your first woodchuck. Namely, there are these glands, which need to be removed, because if they're not, your entire house will reek of foul rodent for a week. Mom wasn't thrilled. Our second try was far more successful, and soon my mouth would water whenever I spotted a little fuzzball in the field. Most recently, I used one of the magazine's rabbit recipes by Shelley Wiseman and simply substituted groundhog. I brought the leftovers into work. They disappeared. It was a huge hit. Ruth Reichl swallowed a mouthful and pursed her lips, a gesture she's prone to when really concentrating on flavor. She said, "Wow, that's a whole new taste for me." Inspired, I made a pâté from the liver... but that didn't go over so well. By the way, look for Tim Stark's book, A Farm Grows in Brooklyn, in summer 2008.
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