Blood and Guts: Travelers Seek Experiences to Hunt, Gather, and Prepare Food

There was a time when a classic cooking class, held in a bucolic space and which taught how to prepare a three-course meal, already met expectations.

But today that is not enough. Courses that get students hands-on with ingredients are gaining in popularity with travelers looking for culinary experiences that feel more primitive.

What these people want is not so much to stir-fry in the hills of Florence as to grind the ingredients of a sausage. They want transparency about where and when produce is harvested and how to get it so they can consume less plastic-wrapped foodstuffs of unknown origin.

There are no precise figures for this trend, but Emily Fitzroy, owner of the travel agency Bellini Travel, which specializes in Italy, says she is seeing more clients interested in learning a culinary skill on their vacation. “Customers want to come back from vacation having learned something new,” she said. Among the specialized trips she has recently booked is one that involves an in-depth dive into the world of kids.

Another travel operator, Black Tomato, creates hands-on “culinary moments” that give people a deeper look into the origins of food by going straight to the source. One possibility is to spend an afternoon on a traditional sailboat in Norway’s Lofoten Islands, where participants fish, clean and prepare cod, a crucial source of income in the region.

James Beard Award-winning adventurer, chef and cookbook author Hank Shaw offers three-day culinary hunts in Oklahoma through his company –Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook. , Cook)—and in partnership with Larry Robinson of Coastal Wings Guide Service. In addition to hunting, the experience includes learning to skin, pluck, and other aspects of grooming game animals, including waterfowl, so participants can bypass commercial processors. Expeditions cost $2,000 (the amount includes lodging, hunts and chef-prepared meals), are advertised in Hank Shaw’s newsletter, and places usually sell out in less than 48 hours.

My own quest for a deeper food experience led me to Nick Weston, whose cooking classes in rural Sussex, England, cover game carving and other wild food adventures.

Weston is 41 years old and a modern-day hunter-gatherer. He studied Mesolithic cultures and archeology in college, worked as a freelance chef, spent three months in the South Pacific as a “survival specialist” for the British reality show “Shipwrecked” (a British version of “Survivor”), and then returned to his home in Sussex to live without running water or electricity in a tree house he built himself from recycled materials, surviving on what he can hunt, fish and gather in nature.

Described in his blog that later became a book, “The Treehouse Diaries: How to Live Wild in the Woods”, the “bushcraft” – something like bushcraft – taught by Weston has attracted the interest of people who crave a connection with nature. In 2011 he created a cooking school, Hunter Gather Cook, and began offering day-long courses on how to butcher game animals, collect edible plant species from the wild, and light fires. Classes were held in a tree house built in the middle of nowhere.

When my husband and I signed up for one of these courses last summer (a private course, as our schedule didn’t coincide with the group course schedule), Weston had already moved its headquarters to a 19th-century threshing barn, situated in an equally isolated spot. We started the morning walking along a gravel trail shouting “hello?” as we looked for signs of life beyond the ferrets fleeing our approach.

We walked through a door and into an environment that mixed elements of the “hygge” of Soho House restaurants (exposed brick walls covered in vintage signs, a bulging wood stove and cozy blankets) with a dash of Brothers Grimm’s Tales (knives, hatchets and stuffed animals). Metallica’s loaded playlist intensified the mood.

We started the course working with wood pigeons.

Standing at a table on which the essential tools—chopping boards, knives, buckets—were laid out, a member of Weston’s team who introduced himself as Chops told us where and when the birds (much more attractive than the pigeons in my hometown , Chicago) were slaughtered and how the meat would be cooked (the thighs would be fried and the breast would be roasted in the oven), this is because how the bird will be carved depends on how you intend to cook it afterwards. “You’re going to be guided by the bird’s bone structure,” he said, explaining that we would mainly use our hands to break the bird into pieces.

We lifted the bluish gray plumage to get an idea of ​​the pigeon’s anatomy: wings, chest, sternum, legs and tail. It looked fine. But just in case, I located a way out, in case my stomach revolted when the feathers started flying.

Plucking was easy. You pull the feathers up (against the direction they naturally go) with about the same force as you would use to pull a loose thread from a T-shirt. We then made a small incision in the chest and “loosened the skin” with our fingers until the breasts were exposed. No nausea so far. I found the exercise fascinating. After we ripped off the legs, cut off the head and wings, the remaining meat was similar to something you would see in a butcher shop.

Removing the viscera was more unpleasant. But once that was done, we laid the clean birds on different, clean cutting boards to inspect our work and make sure there was no damage, such as broken bones or trauma from the shots that killed the pigeons. Then the meat was handed over to the chefs.

My curiosity had overcome my disgust, and I was thrilled.

The next step was the rabbits. Cutting off a rabbit’s legs is not work for the faint of heart. I pushed any idea of ​​”Pedro Coelho”, the animated film, out of my head, while I removed the feet, tail and head, to then skin the animal, making an incision in the belly, loosening the skin with my hands and tearing it off. The area between the shoulders and hind legs of the rabbit is the loin and contains the most tender cuts, so this is where we cut the fillets and rump meat that would form part of our meal.

Once the butcher’s work was done, we exchanged our knives for gardening baskets and went out to gather yarrow, nettles, sorrel and elm trees. Some of these herbs would also be included in our meal. The south of England is an edible mushroom paradise, but unfortunately it wasn’t yet the season to harvest the region’s famous truffles and chanterelles.

About three hours had passed, and a stimulating drink would be most welcome.

Back in the garden behind the threshing barn, we were served snacks accompanied by a “wild” cocktail: gin cocktails with nettles harvested from the wild, which we drank with a natural borage stem straw.

“This is where the magic happens,” Weston said, pointing to a hollowed-out area lined with thatch to contain a fire. Next to it was a clay oven and a huge wood oven.

I was initially surprised that a course entitled “Hunter Gather Cook” did not involve participants cooking the food.

But I got it all figured out when I sat down to devour a charred sourdough loaf that practically begged to be dipped in baked camembert, smoothed and sprinkled with truffles (Weston’s dogs are trained to sniff out truffles). We had spent a few hours of intense activity. Leaving the kitchen work to Weston’s staff crowned our efforts with a bit of luxury.

The wine flowed freely when the next two dishes arrived: crispy bear white accompanied by fried pigeon leg and smoked fallow deer tartare and a speckled quail egg shell sheltering its yellowish yolk. We sang along with Nelly and Travis Tritt as the dishes continued to arrive: gazpacho with fresh herbs from the garden, cold smoked oysters scented with yarrow and sorrel, fillets of rabbit with a caesar salad, grilled loin of rabbit stuffed with pigeon breast wrapped in pancetta.

It wasn’t a rustic buffet spread—it was a serious tasting menu that told a story of how the local, seasonal produce of this particular place became the sophisticated dish in front of me.

Group courses are one day long and cost 100 British Pounds per person (R$630). In addition to the classic course, there are chef collaboration days and special seasonal courses that run from £85 to £180 (R$530 to R$1,130).