Game

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

I had a partridge for dinner last night. No special recipe, I just wrapped it in bacon and roasted it. It was delicious. But then I do like game.

20 years ago or more, I knew a guy who managed a shoot so I bought a few pheasants from him. It soon developed into a nice little sideline whereby I'd buy a load from him, say 20 or 30 brace on a Sunday and sell them off to my office colleagues on the Monday at 100% profit. Depending on the weather, I use to hang mine for up to a week to develop the taste. Once I forgot about one and left in the shed for three months: it didn't rot, it just mummified. So I cooked it but it was dry and tasteless.

Then there were the partridge, the grey and the red-legged Frenchman. The former is the native British species and the flesh is more delicate. Much later this led me to notice one of the few errors in the Hannibal Lector books. Oh for sure, Thomas Harris had done his research well to portray Hannibal Lector as a gourmet with his taste for Batard Montrachet and white Italian truffles. But he went sadly wrong in saying that the Frenchman is superior to the grey.

Well on this shoot, they also bagged a few other birds and so I got to know and taste woodcock (a little gem), teal, widgeon and the wonderful mallard. Wild duck beats the hell out of any farm reared stuff anyday. The taste is divine and the fat is minimal. These guys fly for a living so they carry no baggage.

Only ever had one grouse which he gave me after going on holiday to a shoot in Northern England. The flesh was purple which I guess came about through eating bilberries. Wonderful for then I finally understood why there is so much fuss about grouse.

There is just one downside to all this. Buying the stuff fresh means you have to pluck them and dress them. No real probs except that most game skin is quite delicate so you can't just rip the feathers off and when they are really young you get all them pin feathers as well. A small price to pay, I thought.

Only ever had one hare too. Had to skin and gut it myself. So much blood, I had to drain it into the ice tray and make blood cubes. Nice and meaty though.

Venison? Too dry for me. No fat and fat is what adds to the taste which is why I think that sirloin is the best beef cut of all. Mind you, I once tried Kobe beef in Japan and that is full of marbled fat. Now that was divine, it just melted in you mouth.