Used to catch bluegill as a kid but never cooked them . . . you could probably treat them like sole perhaps -- almost everything taste good pan-braised in a sauce of butter, olive oil, and garlic!
I've cooked wild AZ rabbit (cottontail) in a hunter's paella. Paella is classic 'peasant food' so it is infinitely adaptable (many recipe books and websites go overboard making paella into a boutique food, with duck confit and fancy ingredients that are hard to find).
Take a basic paella recipe and replace the seafood with rabbit, quail, sausage. Lots of garlic and paprika, and eat with good red table wine. This recipe I adapted from a NYT article. You don't have to have all the ancillary ingredients like peppers but they do add something nice. You can make it in a Dutch oven at the fire - it won't be quite the same as a paella pan but still tastes great! (The recipe below is adapted for one-pot cooking, without the paella pan)
1 large link of spicy sausage or chorizo
1 rabbit, cut up
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
5 cups water
1/4 teaspoon saffron threads
2 quails, quartered
1 medium onion, minced
1 small red bell pepper, cored, seeded and minced
1 small green bell pepper, cored, seeded and minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
1 sprig each fresh thyme and rosemary or dash of dried
2 teaspoons sweet paprika, preferably Spanish (if you like paprika, add 1T)
4 ripe plum tomatoes, minced - or half a can of diced
3 cups short-grain rice, like arborio
1. Season rabbit with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large Dutch oven. Cook sausage, remove to plate. Add rabbit and quail and brown. Stir in half a cup of sherry or dry white wine, deglaze pan (loosen up the browned bits for their flavor), then add 5 cups water, bay leaf, and if you have them some onion and carrots (to enhance stock). cover and simmer over coals or flame 30 minutes or so, until meat is cooked. Remove meat from the stock and allow to cool. Discard onion, bay leaf and carrots if used.
2. Add saffron to stock, bring to a simmer, then pour the stock into another pot.
3. Heat more oil in the pot. Add onion, green and red pepper, garlic, and herb sprigs to pan. Cook very slowly, stirring from time to time, until lightly browned.
4. While vegetables are cooking, remove meat from bones in large chunks, and cut up sausage.
5. Add paprika and tomatoes to pot and cook until most liquid in pan has evaporated, about 10 minutes. Add rice and saute briefly. Add stock to pot, stir and simmer 10 minutes. Tuck pieces of rabbit, quail and sausage into rice. Cover and bake 15 minutes. Remove, cover loosely with foil and set aside 10 minutes.
Yield: 6-8 servings.
