Andrew: Brian is doing the cooking today at the Ember Restaurant at the Snowshoe Mountain Resort. Brian is a pure West Virginian and while the menus in his restaurants are modern and globally inspired, his real passion is taking familiar mountain comfort foods that his grand mother would recognize and recreating them for his friends.
Andrew: What are the things we’re going to do with this squirrel food wise?
Brian: We start of with squirrel brains.
Andrew: Squirrel brains.
Andrew: When food was scarce, people ate just about everything on the animal but nowadays, savoring the brain is as common to a squirrel dinner as pulling the wish bone is a to a turkey meal. And the most common squirrel dinner is chicken fried squirrel. You soak the squirrel over night in salted water to purge any off flavors and blood from the meat. Dip it in buttermilk and an egg and dredge it and season flour.
Andrew: Now this is pretty much everything but the head.
Brian: Correct.
Andrew: And you are frying it lard.
Brian: We’re frying in baking pan.
Andrew: In baking? Yes!
Brian: Growing up, we just kept baking grease all in the stove.
Andrew: Oh that is fantastic.
Brian: The stove and you use that for everybody.
Andrew: But this is a kitchen where mountain tradition mixes with haute cuisine.
Andrew: What is this?
Brian: Roasted squirrel, sort of a —squirrel, you know.
Andrew: Oh yeah! Oh that is red wine heavens.
Andrew: And it gets even fancier. This is a block of Tahitian sea salt, heated to 600º. It is used for searing squirrel meat on skewers.
Andrew: That is fantastic.
Andrew: The oceanic flavor from the salt is absorbed by the meat as it cooks on the hot slob.
Brain: Yeah and you know we do it here at the restaurant too and it just gives the opportunity to play with their food, you know.
Andrew: People love that.
Brian: Absolutely.
Andrew: And with that, were ready to eat. Brian has invited a few friends to share the squirrel feast. The setting shows the inexorable flow of Appalachian culture. The enduring legacy of a heard scrabble past; finding its place in the more sophisticated settings of modern life.
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