In "Girl Hunter," urbanite Georgia Pellegrini sets out to learn to hunt and also to learn from others about how and why they hunt. Despite being meat-focused, the book has qualities that will appeal to a range of conscious eaters.
While working as a financial analyst on Wall Street, Pellegrini got an urge to get back to the land in some way, having fond memories of frolicking in the Hudson Valley as a child. After shifting her career to gourmet chef, two more turning points stood between her and looking her future meat dishes in the eye: when an intimidating chef instructed her and a few others to slaughter five turkeys for a dish, and when an Arkansas entrepreneur for whom she had regularly cooked discovered that she'd never hunted. This prompted him to arrange her first hunt, and after that, she was sold.
In each chapter, Pellegrini describes a different hunt and shares musings about the experience, some funny, some serious. The hunts take place in a range of environments and with an assortment of partners, from duck hunting in a Louisiana bayou to a formal, "driven" shoot (where people chase animals out of hiding so others can shoot them) in England. The second half of each chapter consists of recipes for the aforementioned game, each with a thorough introduction. At the end of the book are recipes for stocks, marinades, brines, rubs and sauces, along with additional technical (yet comprehensible) information about cooking and aging different types of game meat.
Many readers may come to "Hunter" bearing only a hazy notion of American hunting: "some sort of white, middle-aged mancation -- guys going out into the woods together to drink gallons of beer, tell dirty jokes, and occasionally shoot at something."
This is in sharp contrast, Pellegrini points out, to hunting's much more sophisticated place in England. Indeed, Pellegrini shows it to be a much richer experience in general, regardless of locale: contemplative, filled with camaraderie, even somewhat poetic, and not only the best way to procure and eat meat, but also a way to become "a more conscious chef and ... awake human being."
Occasionally, in her attempts to describe the beauty of her natural surroundings, Pellegrini's language stumbles into the clunky and flowery; additionally, the hunting part of a chapter sometimes feels too short. But these issues are relatively minor and are virtually eclipsed by Pellegrini's true love of food and cooking. Not only does she provide useful information on game animals (both live and dead), but she also poses inquiries on modern omnivorous life: on the sustainability of our eating, and on the state of our relationship with nature -- or lack thereof.
Kim Hedges is an editor and book reviewer in the San Francisco Bay Area.