Game
Sporting times
Simon Courtauld
IN THE WINTER of 1915, and again in 1940, the pheasant shooting season was extended beyond its normal closing date of 1 February. This was not to give the young gentlemen a few more weeks to get their eye in against the Germans, but to help stock up the national larder for the hard times ahead.
Though we are not — not quite — at war with Germany again today, our economic plight is surely catastrophic enough to justi- fy another postponement of the close sea- son this winter. We could at least provide some pheasants for the miners.
Of course, pheasants become cheaper to buy as the season progresses and supply increases, and they should soon cost much less than the /6 for an oven-ready bird which was being asked in London last month. However, unless the season is extended, they are unlikely to be available again, as they were three years ago, at £1.50 a brace unplucked. This was largely because of the number of commercial 'chicken' shoots, where far too many birds were being reared and pheasant-shooting was in danger of getting a bad name. At least the recession has put an end to the worst of such excesses.
Since no self-respecting sportsman will shoot driven pheasants before November, not many will be available in the shops until the middle of this month (unless they are frozen birds from last season). The hanging of a pheasant, before it is plucked and drawn, is really a matter of personal taste and the weather; but if you are obliged to buy the bird already prepared, only your nose will tell you whether it is 'high' enough — though it is worth asking the butcher whether it has been hung for at least a week.
Many butchers, and a few fishmongers, are licensed game dealers. Some wholesale game dealers also have a retail business, and it is worth contacting them (through the Yellow Pages directory) to discover if they will sell to you direct. Whether a pheasant is supplied to the butcher already 'processed', or he buys it in the feather from a shoot, it is unlikely to be hung unless specially requested. Game for export is invariably dispatched unhung, because foreigners apparently prefer it 'fresh'.
According to Brillat-Savarin, pheasant should be eaten 'at precisely the right moment [when] its flesh is tender, sublime and highly flavoured . . . and the pheasant begins to decompose. Then its aroma develops in an oily essence which requires a little fermentation to reach perfection.' Others will dispute this gastronomic moment of truth and will wish to find their own, or just hope for the best.
There is little disagreement about the best way to cook the bird of Phasis, which was first discovered by Jason and his Arg- onauts on the boundary between ancient Europe and Asia. It — the hen bird is said to be more delicately flavoured — should be roasted with rashers of bacon over the breast and, because the flesh can get a bit dry, some butter and a piece of stale bread soaked in sherry stuffed into the body. Bread sauce, of course, and gravy made with the bird's juices should be served very hot, together with game chips, fried bread- crumbs and cabbage or Brussels sprouts. I have also taken lately to eating cranberry sauce with pheasant.
After the beginning of December, if you live in the country, roast pheasant may be considered a slightly boring dinner-party dish by guests who have been eating little else for the past month. The temptation then arises — always resisted by my wife — to offer 'buggered-up' pheasant, a la Nor- mande, with sliced apples, cream and Cal- vados (not bad), or casseroled, which is usually a mistake. The alternative is to put your surfeit of pheasants in the deep-freeze, where, in my experience, they keep quite satisfactorily for up to two years (and become less high during the freezing process). A brace of pheasants should feed four or five people and leave enough for yourself to have cold for breakfast the next morning. I have never found partridge to be quite as tasty when plain roasted. I cherish the memory of a recipe which began, 'Take 12 partridges and 6 pints of double cream' — just the thing to lift recessionary gloom — but I rather think that I prefer to eat the bird Spanish-style, stewed with garlic, wine and vegetables until the flesh comes away from the bones.
Of the other game birds, grouse is approaching the end of its season; wood- cock and snipe are not easy to buy, and are traditionally cooked without being drawn, with their heads left on. According to one recipe book, The Sporting Wife, 'woodcock are best two or three weeks after they have arrived in this country, when they have had time to rest up and feed'. But they are such delightful birds to watch in flight that I ant not convinced that I want to shoot them any more. The meat of the woodcock Is strongly flavoured; best of all is the piece of toast, soaked in giblet juices, on which the bird should be cooked. Wild duck should not be hung for more than two days. Mal- lard will suffer from being overcooked; Ty favourite, when roasted, is teal (one bird per person), which should be accompanied by a gravy made with port and fresh orange juice. Hare is excellent value — a large one can feed eight — but the paunching, skinning and jointing of it is a tricky and a bloody business. If you buy it from the butcher, make sure you get the blood, then follow Jennifer Paterson's unbeatable recipe for jugged hare in her book, Feast Days. I am not really competent to pronounce on venison, though roe and fallow deer .are less fibrous, and much better in my opinion, than red deer. A brother-in-law has recent- ly given us a haunch of muntjak, which I look forward to trying, possibly with juniper berries, nutmeg, sour cream and a puree of celeriac. This is now the most numerous deer species in Britain and, in these depressed times, a useful additional source of meat Ol case we run out of pheasants. And there Is • Yea,* no close season for muntjak.
Previous page
