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Ptarmigan
| CB 6, 77 |
Iza had been especially pleased when she saw Zoug returning from a trip to the steppes with a clutch of ptarmigan. The low-flying, heavy birds, easily brought down with stones from the marksman's sling, were Creb's favorite. Stuffed with herbs and edible greens that nested their own eggs, and wrapped in wild grape leaves, the savory fowl were cooking in a smaller stone-lined pit. |
VH 25, 412 |
She had searched up and down the valley for the right combination of greens and herbs, and had brought them to the stone oven. She collected coltsfoot for its slightly salty taste; nettles, pigweed, and sprightly wood sorrel for greens; wild onions, garlicky-tasting ramsons, basil, and sage were for flavor. Smoke would add its touch of flavor as well, and wood ashes a taste of salt.
She stuffed the birds with their own eggs nested in the greens - three eggs in one bird and four in the other. She had always wrapped grape leaves around the ptarmigan before they were lowered into the pit, but grapes did not grow in the valley. She remembered fish was sometimes cooked wrapped in fresh hay, and decided that would work for fowl. |
| MH 9, 133 |
It was the wrong season for the greens she like to use - coltsfoot, nettles, pigweed - and for ptarmigan eggs, or she would have stuffed the cavity with them, but some of the herbs in her medicine bag, used lightly, were good for seasoning as well as healing, and the hay she wrapped the birds in added a subtle flavor of its own. It might not be exactly Creb's favorite dish when she was through, but the ptarmigan should taste good, she thought. |
| MH 9, 134 |
There are some other vegetables you might think of using, and we do have some salt," Nezzie volunteered.
Salt, Ayla thought. She hadn't cooked with salt since she left the Clan. "Yes, would like salt. Maybe vegetable. Will look. Where I find hot coals?" |
| MH 9, 135 |
Ayla looked through the storage rooms to see if there was anything that appealed to her to stuff the ptarmigan with. She was tempted by some dried embryos from the eggs of birds, but they would probably have to be soaked, and she wasn't sure how long that would take. She thought about using wild carrots or the peas from milk vetch pods, but changed her mind.
Then she caught sight of the woven container that still held the gruel of grains and vegetables she had stone-boiled that morning. It had been put aside to lunch on as anyone wished, and had thickened and settled. She tasted it. Without salt, people preferred distinctive, spicy flavors, and
she had flavored the gruel with sage and mint, and added bitterroots, onions, and wild carrots to the mixed rye and barley grains.
With some salt, she thought, and the sunflower seeds she had seen in a storage room, and the dried currants ... and perhaps coltsfoot and rose hips from her medicine bag, it might make an interesting filling for the ptarmigan. Ayla prepared and stuffed the birds, wrapped them in fresh-cut
hay, and buried them in a pit with some bone coals and covered them with ashes. |
| MH 11, 157 |
(...) everyone sampled Ayla's ptarmigan. (...) Ayla decided she liked the grain stuffing. |
| PP 22, 380 |
"You have to dig a hole in the ground, line it with rocks, and build a fire in it, then put the birds in, all wrapped in hay, cover them up, and then wait." |
| PP 22, 383 |
Then she began to think about what she might stuff the cavities with. If they had been nesting, she would have used their own eggs, but she had used grains when she lived with the Mamutoi. It would take a long time to pick enough grains, though. Harvesting wild grains was a time-consuming process best done with a group of people. The big ground roots might be good, maybe with wild carrots and onions. |
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Abbreviations |
Editions |
| CB |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
The page numbers refer to the hardcover editions by Crown Publishers, Inc, New York 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990.
Book 1-3 are the Special Collector's Edition, I don't know if the page numbers differ from those of the 'normal' hardcover editions. |
| VH |
The Valley of Horses |
| MH |
The Mammoth Hunters |
| PP |
The Plains of Passage |
| (...) |
omission |
Copyright |
| ... |
original in text |
All book quotes: © Copyright Jean M. Auel
The format and text contents of this site are the property of the author |
| MGMH |
'A Modern Herbal', by Mrs. M. Grieve |
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