#215 Mallard

As mentioned, the freezer is being emptied of its long-sequestered goodies. First up is this roast mallard. I also found a couple of Seville oranges in there too so I thought I’d do a classic orange sauce too (see the next post, when I get round to writing it!).

I had never tried mallard before but I love duck so I was looking forward to this, I have to say. I took them out of the freezer and allowed them to defrost overnight. On preparing them I found that they smelt pretty – er – ripe, which was a wee bit concerning, but I continued. The instructions are very straight forward if you want to tackle roast mallard: inside the bird, put in some butter, seasoning and herbs; outside, season with salt and pepper. You don’t need any butter or back fat to protect the birds as they have a layer of fat anyway. According to Jane, they should be roasted rare, so they only require 30 minutes at 200⁰C. When ready, allow to rest for fifteen minutes, carve and serve. I did game chips (see the entry on roast pheasant) and Savoy cabbage along with an orange sauce as suggested by the lady herself. You could make a gravy from the juices and a spoonful of bitter marmalade or an orange salad.

The fowl stench of death

#215 Mallard. These birds were definitely over-hung. They smelt and tasted of death and had gone well past the gamey stage. As I have frame of reference, I’m not sure if they naturally taste like that anyway. I doubt it though. Char and Clive seemed to find this okay, but it was rather too much for me and I couldn’t face a leg. That said, the hanging made the meat very tender and succulent. The next day the kitchen smelt like dead and rotting animals. 3.5/10.

FYI: the hanging of meat – in particular game – is required for the meat to become tender and tasty. Whether it is 28 days for beef, or just 2 to 3 days for small game. Pheasant, for example, is tough and pretty tasteless before hanging. However, people cross the line between well-hung and rotten. Brillat-Savarin – the Eighteenth century gastronome and lawyer – didn’t consider pheasant to be fit for consumption until it was “in a state of complete purification”, according to Larousse Gastronomique.

#203 Partridge

One of the good things about my favourite fishmonger, Out of the Blue, is that – like any good fishmonger – they supply game during the season. It’s very well priced there and I picked up a couple of partridges for just £2.50 each. Great stuff. I’ve already done a stewed partridge recipe from the book. As well as specific recipes, Griggers goes through each game species with some advice on how to cook them. Here is what she says about partridge:

Roast: 30 minutes, 220⁰C;
Inside: chopped liver, chopped onion and butter, mushrooms chopped and stewed in butter;
Serve with: bread sauce, etc as for pheasant (see this recipe);
Braised: with chestnuts and cabbage and white wine (see this recipe).

So roast them I did. I filled them with onion and butter (the fillings used for game are there more to prevent them drying out than anything else, really). Before roasting I did make sure they were well-seasoned. To serve I thought I’d add some mashed potatoes – the bland creaminess goes well with strong metallic-scented game – and some kale with fried bacon lardons stirred through them. Lastly I made a sweet rich sauce from half a pint of strongly-flavoured game stock made from a woodcock carcass (see next entry, if I pull my finger out and write it!), a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly and the deglazed juices from the roasting pan (I used some port do to the deglazing).

#203 Partridge – 6/10. I liked the partridge, the leg meat was very gamey and the breast meat milder; a good combination. I am assuming that they were our own indigenous grey partridges because of their small size and strong flavour (there are two species in the UK, the other being the slightly larger and introduced red-legged partridge). There was a surprisingly large amount of meat on these little birds and one was certainly enough per one person. I would certainly recommend trying them if you haven’t before, though I’d go for the braised recipe rather than this roasted one.

#148 Venison Sausages

Contrary to what you may think; I am not a big meat eater – I’m just not picky! However, I’ve been having a hankering for meat recently, not sure why. Anyways, at the butcher, I spotted some venison sausages that looked very fine indeed so I bought them. They turned out to be from Lyme Park not too far away from me in the Peak District, so the old food miles were happily reduced. Venison sausages are available pretty much anywhere, but a word of warning people – venison from supermarkets probably won’t be British. Supermarket venison usually comes from big deer farms in New Zealand. It’s not bad meat; it’s just flown a long way! Buy yours from your local butcher to get local venison.

This is what the Lady Grigson says to do with your venison sausages:

Fry them in lard or oil very quickly so that they develop nice dark stripes and arrange them closely in a shallow oven dish. Pour in enough red wine to come half-way up the sausages and season them. Bake in a hot oven – 200°C – for 15 minutes. Serve them with mashed potato and some seasonal greens – she says Brussels sprouts and chestnuts, but as it’s Maytime, I plumped for green beans. Pour a little of seasoned wine over the sausages if you like.

#148 Venison Sausages – 7/10. A great way to cook special sausages of any kind I reckon. I’m not giving an excellent score because the venison sausages were good, but not the best ones I’ve ever had. However, the red wine did improve the flavour a lot. The most important thing was that it scratched my red meat itch. The best thing about the whole thing was the fried mashed potato sandwiches I made the morning after. You must try it – fry patties of left-over mash in lard until a crispy crust develops, turn them over and put them in a buttie with brown sauce.

#130 Boiled Wild Rabbit with Onion Sauce

‘Tis the end of the game season here in Old Blighty; though any game fans out there needn’t panic as rabbit is available all year round. This is due to the fact that they are evil vermin and should be ‘disappeared’. They were introduced by the Romans and by the Normans as farm animals, the little critters escaped and we were overrun. I am assuming they outcompeted the hares, causing their numbers to drop. So shoot away – even if you don’t want to eat them. You will be doing a service to the country.

FYI: Easter bunnies do not refer to rabbits, but hares, as it is they who display their ‘mad’ March behaviour. Rabbits are similar and much more common and so have been mis-named. If you spot anyone making this minor error, be annoying and pull them up on it and then do your best smug face to infuriate them further

Anyway, I’d never eaten wild rabbit and had had farmed only the once and totally cocked it up, but since I am loving the game thus far in English Food I knew I’d like this one. Only wild rabbit will do here, people, if you can’t get wild rabbit use duck instead. What also interested me was the huge amount of onions required for this recipe – it’s very rare that onions are used as a vegetable. It’s another Eighteenth Century dish. If you got your rabbit whole and intact, you should use the jaw bones and stick them in the rabbit’s eyes and fill its mouth with myrtle or barberries. Whatever they are.

Here goes…

For 4.

Truss your wild rabbit (or duck) with string, place it in a pan, cover with water, add a bouquet garni (I used parsley, bay, thyme, rosemary and some pared orange rind) and some salt and pepper then bring it to the boil and simmer ‘until done’. Having no frame of reference here, meant checking every now and again. Apparently, younger lithe rabbits cook quicker than old gnarly ones, so check every half an hour after the first hour is up. Once simmering, get to work on peeling 2 to 3 pounds of onions. Pop them in whole along with the rabbit after half an hour and take them out after another half an hour. Now chop them up – a boiled onion is a slippery customer, so be careful with them knife. Fry the onions in 4 ounces of butter until golden in colour, add 4 tablespoons of double cream and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Remove the cooked rabbit and let it rest for a little while and then cut up into serving pieces – two rear legs, two fore legs and the saddle cut into 3 pieces. Arrange on a serving dish and smother with the sauce. Serve with spinach and potatoes as instructed by Griggers herself (I did mash).

#130 Boiled Wild Rabbit with Onion Sauce – 5/10. Not sure if I liked this. It wasn’t vile, as I finished my meal, but wild rabbit has an unusual flavour that is pungent and slightly unappetising. Butters said it tasted like sewage. Weirdly, he wasn’t far away with that description. In fact reading ahead to other rabbit recipes, Griggers herself says that rabbit needs strong flavours to balance its ‘rank flavour.’ This begs the question: if I don’t like it, should I cook the other recipes? They all ask for wild rabbit, however, it is only this recipe that absolutely requires wild, so maybe I should try farmed next time. Not sure. Slightly disappointed that I dislike something – I pride myself in not being a fussy eater. Anyways, the onion sauce was lovely and rich and creamy – loved that. Perhaps using a duck would have been better all round.

#128 Woodcock

Here’s something I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually get to cook! The woodcock is Britain’s smallest game bird – it’s very well camouflaged and hides away in scrub and hedgerows, and is quite uncommon. All this adds up to a meat you don’t see everyday. However, I was the Frost the Butcher in Chorlton buying some mutton for a pie, when I saw a huge standing freezer full of game saw the typical stuff – venison, rabbit, pigeon and there – tucked away on the bottom shelf – a brace of woodcock. Obviously I snapped them up, only to find they were 15 quid each! I bought just the one, natch.

Finding the woodcock was exciting, as I am now officially a food geek – however I was feeling a little trepidation; this is definitely the first really extreme thing I’ve made from the cook book. Woodcock is considered a delicacy not just because it’s so hard to get hold of, but also because pretty much the whole thing is eaten. Essentially, the bird is roasted rare, whole and completely intact (except the eyes are removed and it is plucked) and trussed with its own beak. The trail of the bird (i.e. the guts, liver etc) is spread on fried bread and the head is split in two so that you can use the beak of one half to prize out the brain from the other.

Woodcock trussed with its own beak

Here’s what to do if you happen upon this little birdie:

Preheat your oven to 220°C. Start off by trussing the bird with it’s beak by spearing the thighs to keep them closed up together. Season the breasts and cover liberally with butter so it doesn’t dry out. Place on a small roasting tin and cook for 18-20 minutes. Whilst that is happening, fry one slice of white bread per bird gently in butter, placing it under the woodcock(s) for the final 5 minutes of cooking. When the time is up, remove the bread and place on a warmed plate and allow the bird to rest for 5 or 10 minutes in the pan. Next, using a knife and/or spoon scoop out the trail (everything except the gizzard – which is actually hard to get to, so it’s unlikely you’ll accidently scoop it out). Spread the trail on the toast. Cut off the head and cut it in half lengthways so that you can use the beak to remove the brain from the halves. You can serve the bird whole or remove the breasts if you like.

The final dish

#128 Woodcock. How on Earth am I going to score this one!? Eating the innards of a bird wasn’t something I was going to relish – but I did relish the idea of eating something very traditional but very out-of-favour. From that point of view – an excitement rating – 10/10. Flavour-wise, the breast meat was very gamey indeed – the smaller the bird, the stronger the flavour – it was so rich that it would have been more than enough for one person. The thigh meat was horrible though – just tasted of dead animal. Bizarrely, the best bit was the trail on toast. The intestines were very soft and there was nothing chewy, though it took some courage to make the first bite. Turns out it tastes a bit like Marmite. Very nice. The brain didn’t really taste as strong as the trail, but was soft and slightly greasy in texture; it appealed to my sudden manly bloodlust though. So overall, it is a high scorer, but not too high – I don’t want to give it loads of marks because of the novelty, so on flavour alone, I reckon it’s worthy of 6/10.

#122 Roast Pheasant

The Roast Pheasant was obviously the star of the meal – not just because it is a meat we don’t eat enough of, but also from my point of view because to tick it off I had to do lots of accompanying dishes, so some organisation was required. If you want to have a go, you can have as many of the elements as you wish, though try to do as many as possible as they do go so very well together as a dish. The trickiest part was getting hold of pheasant giblets – however, the nice game butcher at the Farmers’ Market got me them when I asked. Make a point of ordering them as they are routinely thrown away. So, the roast pheasant is made up of five individual parts:

1. The pheasants themselves
2. The game chips
3. The giblet gravy
4. The browned crumbs
5. The bread sauce (dealt with separately as #123).

Most of this can be made in advance and reheated, that which is not, is easy and quick to prepare and will not keep you from your guests for very long.

To prepare the brace of pheasants, begin by removing the giblets and setting them aside for later on. Stuff each bird with 2 ounces of butter, plus the liver (make sure you remove the green bitter gall bladder) and a good seasoning with salt and pepper, then lay a thin sheet of back pork fat over them that is large enough to cover the beasts and legs. Secure the back fat by tying string around the pheasants. Place them in a roasting tin and set aside for when you want to roast them – they should be roasted at 190°C for 20 minutes per pound plus an extra 10 minutes. You calculate this for the heaviest bird; in my case 2 pounds, so 50 minutes in all. For the final 10 minutes of cooking, remove the back fat and dust the breasts lightly with seasoned flour. Remove from the oven and allow to rest. I did this just before the guests arrived so that the birds could rest as the leek tarts were cooking. To serve it, I removed the legs, then sliced the breast meat and placed on a bed of watercress.

When the birds were prepared, I started on the gravy: first place the giblets (minus livers) in a saucepan along with a sliced carrot, a sliced onion and a bouquet garni and enough light beef stock to cover everything generously. This was simmered gently for two hours before being finished off later (see below). Next job was to get the game chips sorted. Game chips are basically crisps cut very thinly on a Chinese mandolin using the ridged blade to produce a lattice, or gaufrette, pattern. Peel 1 ½ pounds of firm potatoes. Put the mandolin at its thinnest setting and slice downwards, turning the potato a quarter-turn as you bring it back up to make the next slice to get the lattice effect. Put the chips into a large bowl of water to remove starch and then dry thoroughly. Deep fry in batches at 200°C until golden brown, and drain on kitchen paper and salt them well. This can be re-heated in the oven whenever you need to use them.

Once the starters had been eaten, I put the game chips in the oven and got to work on the buttered crumbs and rest of the giblet gravy. For the crumbs, 3 ounces of stale white breadcrumbs were fried gently for 5 or 10 minutes in 1 ½ ounces of butter until golden. They were placed in a serving dish and kept warm with the game chips. For the gravy, the stock with all the lovely the giblet flavours poured into the roasting tin. The stock was boiled hard and all the nice sticky bits that were found on the bottom of the pan were scraped off. When reduced, a glass of port was added, there was a quick seasoning, and the gravy was strained into a sauce boat.

So that there was a bit of green, also served some peas and green peas, but also Bread Sauce (as instructed) and (#124) Creamed Celery – Grigson says that either celery or mushrooms should be eaten with roast pheasant.

#122 Roast Pheasant – 9.5/10. What a brilliant meal! It was well worth the effort, I cannot fault it in any way really, and will definitely make it again, though maybe not with all the required elements. The pheasant was juicy and just-cooked, the gravy was beautifully rich and luscious, the breadcrumbs provided a nice crunchy texture and the game chips were tasty, some crunchy and some soggy in the gravy and bread sauce. For me, pheasant is the king of the game birds, and after this, it is going to be very difficult to knock it off the top spot.

FYI: to be a bit thrifty, I made soup from the carcasses and left over veg and trimmed celery etc and it was lovely – I’ll put a recipe up for it. I am never chucking out a carcass again!

#108 Partridge with Chestnuts and Cabbage

When I made the chestnut soup the other day, I made sure that there was enough spare to make this dish. I had bought a brace of partridge from the Farmers’ Market a couple of months ago waiting for some chestnuts to turn up. I had never eaten partridge before, but I know it is a highly-prized game bird. This is a very easy dish to cook – a very good introduction to game, if you haven’t cooked it before.

Here’s what to do with a brace of the little birdies:

Brown the partridge and 6 ounces of chopped streaky bacon in 1 ½ ounces of butter. When done, transfer the to a casserole dish and brown18 pickling onions, or 9 shallots, and add them to the dish too. Next, take a glass of dry white wine and deglaze the pan with it, making sure all the nice stuck-down bits come away from the pan’s base and pour over the birds. Add a little beef stock so that the liquids comes around half-way up the partridges. Cover and cook in a moderate oven – around 150ºC. Grigson now says to take out the birds when ‘almost done’. I had no idea when this would be and thought it would be slightly less than the pigeon I once did, but I was wrong. Take them out after around 45 minutes (I cooked them for 2 ½ hours!) and remove the birds. Add some Savoy cabbage that has been blanched for 10 minutes and lay it out in the dish. Return the birds. Now add 6 ounces of chestnuts that have been pricked, boiled for 15 minutes and then peeled. Cook for a further 45 minutes, or less if the meat comes easily away from the bones. I realised that they were already done at this point and didn’t leave the chestnuts in long enough. According to Larousse Gastromonique partridge shouldn’t take any more than 1 ½ hours to cook.

Finally, arrange the chestnuts, cabbage and onions or shallots on a dish with the birds on top and allow them to rest. Meanwhile, reduce the liquor from the dish by boiling it down hard to concentrate the flavours. This final step is very important. Serve with boiled potatoes.

#108 Partridge with Chestnuts and Cabbage – 7.5/10. A very delicious meal – everything went so very well together and the partridge was pale with a nice gamy flavour that was not overpowering at all. The dish should be a 9 really I think, as the birds were overdone and a little dry and the chestnuts not cooked enough, but hey-ho that’s my fault, not Grigson’s.

#95 Stewed Hare with Forcemeat Balls

I was going to leave the hare that I bought at the Farmers’ Market the other weekend for the 100th recipe, but I thought since a few people were coming over I’d cook it. There are a few recipes in the book, but I went for Stewed Hare with Forcemeat Balls. It’s relatively straightforward. Don’t be scared if you’ve never eaten hare, if you are too squeamish however you can use 6 pigeons or 3 pounds of stewing venison instead. Don’t be scared either of cooking game – all you need is a bit of patience; long, slow cooking is required, but it’s easy enough, get the thing simmering away and you can do whatever you want whilst waiting for it to cook.

FYI: please don’t all go out and order a hare from your butchers – they have had a decline in recent decades. I only bought mine because it just happened to be at the game stall. Check out the Hare Preservation Trust website for more details.

The trickiest part of this dish is the preparation of the hare itself; unless you have a good butcher who’ll joint it for you, you’ll have to do it yourself. I’m not going to go through how to do it here, but here’s a link to the River Cottage guide to jointing a rabbit, which is the same principle. I have to say: make sure you invest in sturdy knives, including a meat cleaver, otherwise it’ll be very tricky to do. Also keep any blood and the liver for thickening the stew with later. (Also, don’t tell anyone about that bit, as it may be one step too far for some folk.)

Before jointing

After jointing

Once jointed, turn the pieces of hare in plenty of seasoned flour and brown them well along with one chopped onion and 8 ounces of chopped streaky bacon in 3 ounces of lard (yes, you COULD use oil, but what’s the point in that!?) in a large stockpot or casserole. Add a teaspoon of chopped thyme, a tablespoon of chopped parsley and half a bay leaf to the pot along with enough stock to just cover everything; use either game stock or beef stock, I used half-and-half of each. Charlotte and I added the heart too; seemed silly to waster it since we were using the liver and blood too. Let the whole thing simmer gently until the meat comes away from the bone easily – around 2 or 3 hours. Now add 6 tablespoons of port and a large tablespoon or two of redcurrant jelly along with some salt and pepper and the dish is done! Use a tablespoon of flour slaked with some hot stew liquor to thicken the stew, or use the blood and mashed liver. Don’t let it boil if using blood, as it will curdle not unlike egg yolks in over-cooked custard. Charlotte and I spent a while removing bones from the meat though, so people didn’t have to worry about bones.

Now that’s done, make the forcemeat balls (named forcemeat as you are making a small amount of meat go very far – peasant food, innit?). In a bowl mix together 4 ounces of fresh breadcrumbs, 2 ounces of chopped suet, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of thyme, the grated rind of half a lemon, 2 ounces of finely chopped bacon, a large egg and some salt and pepper. Form the mixture into balls of around an inch in diameter and fry them until golden in more (yes, more!) lard.

I served it all up with boiled potatoes and peas.

#95 Stewed Hare with Forcemeat Balls – 7/10. The more game I eat, the more I feel I’ve been missing out! I’m always slightly tentative about game, but this is another corker! The stew was rich and thick; hare is very gamy, but the port and redcurrant jelly helped cut through it. Given the chance, I’ll be cooking the remaining hare recipes. The surprise star though was the forcemeat balls – Grigson suggests making them for soups, so if you don’t fancy the hare, make the meatballs! The heart tasted surprisingly nice too…

#33 Stewed Pigeons in Foil

The first of the game dishes made with the produce from my trip to Bury Market. I’ve not had woodpigeon before, and wasn’t too sure if it would be too gamey. I have tried to cook it before but it was so tough it was inedible. My mate John came over for tea and I thought I’d try and do (#33) Stewed Pigeons in Foil. It seemed easy; all was required was time. One pigeon is required per person. Brown the pigeon in butter, breast only, using a hot pan. Allow them to cool. Meanwhile cut pieces of foil large enough to encase the pigeons individually, and spread softened butter over the centre of each piece. Place the birds in the centre and make a parcel with one end still open so you can add the flavourings. Into the cavity add a large knob of butter, thyme, pepper, a slug of brandy, finely chopped onions, a tablespoon of lemon juice, and one of beef stock. Make sure all is sealed well, place on a baking tray and cook for three hours in a low oven. The breasts were removed and seasoned well. It was served with mashed potato and celeriac and the juices from the pigeons (Grigson’s orders). I added some purple sprouting broccoli for something green.

This is definitely the most cheffy looking dish I’ve made so far. It certainly looked the part. The wood pigeon was very tender and moist – it came away from the bone easily. The flavour is very much like liver, in that it’s quite metallic, and it’s got a slightly grainy texture. The mash was divine – used the ricer that I bought for the first time, and will never go back to mashing! – the celeriac and parsley gave in a herby, perfumed taste. Absolutely brilliant! What’s more, eating game is totally sustainable food – even if we all went vegetarian tomorrow, we’d still have to shoot them as part of woodland management (same goes for deer, pheasant, etc…)

FYI: according to the BBC, the wood pigeon is the most common bird in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4646685.stm

#33 Stewed Pigeons in Foil. 9.5/10 – I cannot believe how nice this dish was. Can’t wait to do more game recipes!