Wild boar stew for Christmas dinner

The other day my German friend Thorsten Feldmann told me that he was planning to cook a wild boar goulash for his family for Christmas dinner. His family know a hunter who is also a butcher.The way he described it sounded delicious. His family come from the Rhineland Pfalz part of Germany and so I looked up (through my tome Culinaria) what the traditions around this would be. First of all here is a picture of the boars in the wild.

Not for petting.

Traditionally the forests of the Rhineland -Palatinate are very rich in game including large herds of wild boar. Wild boar do have particularly wild manners and happily root around in meticulously tended front gardens outside of the forest and dig up despairing farmers' meadows and search out every last maize seed that has been sown! The animals can move around more or less unhindered in many places but more than 60,000 wild boar are killed each year by hunters.

They have been hunted more many thousands of years and even the fictional 'Obelix the Gaul' was obsessed with wild roast boar. A modern day version might have been the Wildschweinbraten marinated for two days previous to cooking in a mix of soup vegetables (carrots, leeks, celery stalks, and a bunch of parsley) then covered in red wine, butter and the marinade after draining and cooked until tender. When cooked the meat is kept warm and the juices thickened with bread crumbs. The joint is carved and served with the sauce and creamed potatoes and sauerkraut.

Thorsten has 3kg of wild boar meat to stew with a lot of red wine, spices, onions and garlic. The finished meal will be served with the sauce and dumplings.The boar was from close to the L543 Rheinland-Pfalz Offenbach an der Queich.

Thorsten and myself in Karlsruhe earlier this month.

I am hoping for some pictures from Thorsten of the rich boar stew and their Christmas dinner celebrations.