Righting a wrong: Haggis

The man in the pub was outraged. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re a food writer and you’ve never had haggis? You’ve never had haggis? You’ll be telling me you’ve never seen Star Wars next.’

‘Well, actually, I haven’t ever seen Star Wars,’ I sheepishly admitted. The look of shame that washed over my face was only partly deliberate and for comic value. Mostly, I was genuinely ashamed.

To be fair, eating haggis and watching Star Wars are just two of the many things on the list that is snappily titled ‘Things I probably should have done by now but haven’t, not due to not wanting to but because the circumstances have never been right and I’ve not made the time.’

I’m not a huge fan of those ‘If you’ve not done this you are not a worthwhile human being’ type lists that inevitably end with: walk the Inca Trail, see Aurora Borealis, swim with dolphins. I find them vaguely patronising and aimed at people who need to be told how to have fun (insert smile/shake of the head here).

But this is my own list. And it is things I haven’t done. Not things I have done and feel achingly and cloyingly smug about.

I’ve never been on a proper upside down, spin you round, make you vomit your spleen out through your nostrils roller-coaster (fear of heights, fear of speed, fear of falling out whilst 200 feet in the air and landing on my face). I’ve never read anything by Dickens (no reason, just haven’t). I’ve never seen a Shakespeare production. I’ve never been to Scotland or New York. I’ve never listened to a Sonic Youth album. Ditto Neil Young. I’ve never been to an opera or a ballet. I’ve never seen a Damian Hirst. You get the idea.

The list goes on when it comes to food. Never had a vindaloo (something I wish to rectify). Never eaten a KFC (something I don’t). I’ve never baked a chocolate cake. I’ve never tried frogs’ legs. I’ve never eaten tripe, brain, cheek or bollock (at least not knowingly). And I’ve never eaten haggis.

Until last night.

Last Sunday was Burns’ Night: an excuse (as if they need it) for anyone who is Scottish, claims to be Scottish, thinks they might once have been Scottish, is possibly of Scottish descent, has ever been to Scotland or seen the painting Monarch of the Glen, to drink whisky – without an ‘e’ (that’s not a drug reference) – read unintelligible poetry and eat haggis, that fabled national dish of Scotland.

Haggis is best approached with an open-mind and a willingness to ignore what is on the ingredients list, which reads like something from the opening scene of Macbeth.

It is essentially a great big sausage. Traditionally – and even today – sausages were a way to make palatable the bits that might have been less than appealing and we see this in many cuisines over the world from French boudin to Polish Kaszanka and the haggis is no different. Made from sheep’s pluck (liver, heart and lungs) and padded out with oats, suet and spices, it can be hard for some to swallow.

When I casually mentioned that I fancied getting a haggis for dinner on Sunday my comment was met with little enthusiasm and as such we ended up haggis-less. But my curiosity was finally sated last night when we walked up the road to take part in the quiz at the local pub. Answering general knowledge questions is tough work and at the halfway point we were offered plates of haggis, tatties (mashed potato) and neeps (mashed turnips).

Which was when I mentioned, perhaps mistakenly, to a fellow quizzer that I’d never had haggis. Knowing my line of work, his response was perhaps justified but I soon got to work filling this glaring chasm in my culinary history.

And I am glad I did because haggis is delicious. It has a great savoury taste, similar to black pudding (thanks to the spices) but a firmer and mealier texture reminiscent of course cous cous or quinoa. With buttery mashed potatoes and slightly acidic mashed turnip on the side it was perfect. It would have been a shame not to wash it down with a few ‘wee drams’ of whisky, which is possibly the reason it took me slightly longer to wobble-walk the few hundred metres back to the house than it normally does.

New Residents

I know, I know. This is a food blog. But sometimes rules must be bent, and life is the better for it.

Not content with chickens, my girlfriend has been playfully prodding me in the direction of pets for about six months. That’s pets rather than functional animals, something that lives in the house and doesn’t give us milk or eggs or meat.

By the time the New Year came round, my half-arsed and not-really-very-strong defences had been worn down and we started looking for a cat, or to be more precise a kitten. That was my only stipulation: that we get the smallest, cutest, littlest kitten we could find. I’m aware that they don’t stay small, cute and little for very long but I was happy to ignore that reality.

It didn’t take us long. On our first visit to the Blue Cross we found two little kittens that had to be housed together so we signed the papers and yesterday they came home with us.

And so it is with great pleasure that I introduce you to (drum roll please, though not too noisy, they seem to have an aversion to LOUD NOISES) Josiah and Abigail (henceforth known as Jed and Abby) – named after America’s favourite fictional president and his first lady in The West Wing. It’s fine to call them The Barletts. We do.

Pressing the ‘reset’ button

To all intents and purposes, we live in the countryside. We may be but a short hop to the nearest town and only an hour from London but it is large fields and big skies that form our surroundings.

But sometimes it is easy to overlook that. Or at least develop a complacency.

As silly as it sounds, occasionally I forget that we are living life in the slow lane complete with vegetable patches, miles of hedgerows and an abundance of wildlife all around us.

Perhaps it is something to do with the weather. During the spring, summer and even into autumn I spent a significant amount of time outside. Digging over the soil to make room for vegetables. Sat in the sun eating a fresh salad for lunch. Lying on the lawn and writing. Picking blackberries from beyond the sharp thorns of the brambles or scrumping apples from the abandoned orchard next door.

But come the chill of winter, the rain, the frost and the wind, spending time outside has not been an appealing option. The world seems to have narrowed to the point that, now that January is here, the only thing that really exists are the four walls of my office.

Then something will happen to remind me why we moved here in the first place, something presses my reset button and allows me to open my eyes for a brief moment and actually see.

I was in the kitchen making some breakfast when I heard a faint knocking at the back door. Too quiet to be a neighbour or the postman I looked out of the window to see that the hens’ run was empty.

Sure enough, there they were, the three of them waiting by the back door for handful of something tasty – dried fruit or some seeds.

I sent them on their way with a handful of chopped dates whilst I made do with a toasted hot cross bun (seasonality going out the window here) and a mug of steaming tea, consumed in the garden with the sun just beginning to peep over the skeletal trees. Certainly worth braving the cold for.

Which came first?

A few months back we bought two chickens, Marx and Eggels in the hope that they would provide us with a near endless supply of fresh, delicious free range eggs. Sure enough by the end of November, just as we were giving up hope that either would ever provide us with anything other than vague entertainment, Marx started to lay and we have had an egg every day since then.

The excitement of opening the hatch every morning and finding a perfectly formed egg sitting atop a pile of straw hasn’t dulled. Nor has the novelty of eating them freshly poached, happy in the knowledge that they have travelled no furter than ten metres in their journey from chicken to plate.

But it soon became obvious that Eggels was something of a late developer. Her comb hadn’t grown, she didn’t seem to be putting on any weight and she spent a long time seemingly imitating John Cleese doing a Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. We contacted Cambridge Poultry, where we bought our two revolutionary chicks, and the conclusion was that we had invested in an ‘odd-bod hen’ who didn’t seem destined to lay anything other than epic amounts of chicken poop.

As such, we were offered a replacement, free of charge. Perhaps replacement is the wrong word because there was never any question that Eggels would be returned to sender or end up in the pot. She’d become a pet quite rapidly and we couldn’t even consider the possibility of turning her into food. We’d just let her peck her way around the garden, enjoy our hospitality and generally live the good life.

Just after Christmas we finally got round to picking up chicken number three, Poulet, or Pou, for short. She’s a feisty little chick with a revolutionary zeal stronger even than the other two. So much so that I’ve nicknamed her Henin (in order to keep up the Communist theme).

But then something odd happened. I noticed this:

An egg sitting merrily in our recycling box. I had no idea how long it had been there – whether it was freshly laid or if it had survived three or four frosts but either Marx was laying more than her fair share or Eggels, spurred into action by the threat of a new arrival, had finally started to fulfil her destiny.

And I wasn’t sure which until yesterday when I looked out of the office window and saw Eggels sitting in her newspaper nest looking very pleased with herself, something distinctly egg-shaped underneath her feathery bottom. After she’d got bored and flown off to try and find some bugs to eat I went out to confirm my suspicions and there it was. An Eggels egg.

It may have taken a while, but it was definitely worth the wait.

With Pou due to start laying in the next few weeks I dare say that we will have more than enough to keep us in delicious breakfasts with plenty left over to make sweet tasty items like crème brulee and cinnamon meringues (more on those to follow). I might just have to start baking…

Game on…

It’s only recently that I’ve been aware of game. Not in a completely blinkered way where I was totally blind to its existence but in a more immediate fashion. I’ve always known that pheasants and rabbits and venison were available but rarely did they feature on the menu at home and even when they did, they invariably came pre-packaged in neat little portions, in no discernable pattern at various points in the year.

And whenever we ate it, I enjoyed it. Venison steaks are an absolute joy, especially when served achingly rare with a sweet sauce. Game casserole was also a favourite although it never made it onto the table more than two or three times a year.

It was only when I started writing about food and in turn reading more about the joys of cooking, seasonality and provenance that I became more aware of the importance and pleasure inherent in game.

Seasonality, an aspect of cooking that is of paramount importance to me, is perhaps most prominent with game. Fruit and vegetables exist at the fickle whim of the weather – too much rain, too little sun or a late frost can push back or bring forward the first potatoes of the year or halt the rise of the young and tender asparagus stems. We know broadly when spring lamb is going to be ready or the time of year when trout is at its best. But there are no absolutes.

The appearance of game, on the other hand, is so firmly set in the calendar that you could set an atomic clock to it. It is not just certain months or weeks when you can expect to see the first few partridges or pheasants – you can be sure of the exact day, days that are set in stone in The Calendar and are as important to some as Royal Ascot, The Henley Regattta or The Wimbledon Final.

‘The Season’ kicks off on August 12th, the Glorious Twelfth as it is known, which marks the first day you are able to shoot grouse. Duck, goose and partridge follow on September 1st and pheasants are fair game a month later.

By the end of February many of these are once again off the menu until the months roll around and the whole thing starts again.

For an enthusiastic cook, this is indeed a glorious time of year. Game is everything food should be – slow bred, wild, able to wander around the countryside and free from any insidious hormones and growth promoters. It is a world away from the intensively farmed, pre-packaged meats that have come to dominate the supermarket shelves and now form most people’s idea of what meat is.

With game, even if you buy it ‘oven-ready’ there is a connection to the land and an awareness that what you are about to consume was, until recently, running or flying round rural Britain. There is a purity to it and an almost unfathomable desire to treat it with respect.

This desire is only accentuated when you get hold of something only recently dispatched – head, feathers and guts in tact. This is hands-on food that offers an experience that every meat eater should consider trying if only to appreciate the moral implications of consuming the flesh of another animal.

I’m not going to pretend I am an expert at this. The only time I have been shooting was with an air rifle whilst in the Cub Scouts and then the target was round, paper and lifeless rather than bird-shaped, fleshy and living. Nor am I going to moralise on the rights and wrongs of being a carnivore. My personal belief is that eating meat does come with a necessary need to think about animal welfare and the connection between a burger and a cow or a pork chop and a pig but that is for another day.

What I would suggest is trying to get hold of a complete bird, just once, to experience what it is like to turn something that looks like it was once alive into something resembling a meal. Because it is a great experience that only gets easier with time and practice.

The first time I did the necessary prep work on a pheasant was a few months back (you can read about it here) and, I am happy to admit, it was not an easy process. Like Lady Macbeth frantically and desperately washing her hands, I tried for two days to remove the smell from my fingers although I am sure that it was almost certainly psychological. The mental images, too, are still strong and I approached the whole process with a degree of some fear and trepidation.

But nevertheless I was ball-bouncingly excited when I heard that a colleague of my girlfriend’s was going shooting last weekend because I knew what the result would be.

Sure enough, on Monday evening she arrived home with a heavy bag containing two freshly despatched pheasants: one young hen and one hefty cock whose large spurs and considerable size suggested he was something of a battle weary veteran.

They hung in the garage for two days before I decided to settle down and ‘do the deed’. Fortified with nothing more than strong coffee (last time required wine, much wine) I settled down and started plucking, a process that is almost therapeutic and quickly transforms a recognisable bird into something that resembles meat.

Once naked and the head has been removed, the gutting is a grim inevitability but, honestly, after the first time it presents little problem and within moments I had two birds ready to be washed and butchered as well as a plate of giblets, perfect for making a rich stock along with the bones.

The whole process from start to finish took close to an hour, not bad considering that I managed to prevaricate for almost two the first time I was presented with a complete pheasant. At the end of it I had four sizeable breast portions and a large handful of meat, ideal for creating a rich winter pie to eat in front of a crackling fire with a large glass of something red and warming. Game on indeed.

Please welcome to the stage…

A full two months ago I introduced you to Marx and Eggels, the two most revolutionary chicks this side of Cuba. We bought these two hens when they were a mere 15 weeks old and since then they’ve done little but stalk around the garden and eat raisins. They’ve certainly not been earning their keep by laying any eggs.

Not a single one.

It became something of a running joke: perhaps in the revolutionary spirit they downed tools in some passive act of insurrection. ‘We shall lay no eggs until the demands of the proletariat have been met. Death to the bourgeoisie!’ We even toyed with the idea of getting another chicken to try to placate them. She would have been called Henin.

We tried putting a ping-pong ball in their nest box in the vague hope that something resembling an egg might trigger a hitherto dormant desire to lay. This failed too – they merely kicked it out of their little house and proceeded to kick it around their run and peck it into oblivion. We’d even started discussing the possibility of maybe, maybe having one or both of them for Sunday lunch, but I’m still not sure whether the notion was ever a serious one.

And now it doesn’t matter because this morning there was something warm and distinctly egg shaped sat atop the straw.

So without further ado, I am delighted to be able to introduce you to Sheldon, our very first egg and currently the most expensive ova I have ever had the pleasure to hold – I think, when you factor in the cost of their house, the chickens themselves and the copious amounts of food they nom through, this single egg is worth more than Sevruga caviar.

But it is worth every penny because this is the first and I dare say it will make the smallest, tastiest omelette ever created.

Food for Free – Hawthorn Fruit Leathers

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but a near constant stream of things seems to have got in the way including a minor run in with a large bus (funnily enough, the car came off worse) and a couple of days spent down on various farms chatting with pig breeders and turkey farmers, amongst others (full reports to follow shortly, I promise).

As a means of preservation, fruit leathers are an ancient art and were traditionally used as a means of transforming a summer glut into something that could be eaten throughout the year. It is a method that almost certainly goes back to the Palaeolithic and is still used by hunter-gatherer societies today.

Throughout September and into October, the fruit of the Hawthorn tree (haws – no sniggering at the back please) is in wanton abundance throughout the English countryside. I was inspired to have a crack at making a ‘haw leather’ (tee hee) by a wonderful post by Nick Weston on his equally wonderful blog Hunter-Gatherer Cook.

I’d seen the small red fruits burst from the branches of the Hawthorn trees that scatter the open land around our house but was wary of the berries themselves. I knew they were edible but having cautiously nibbled on a few raw ones, I wasn’t overly impressed by their rather dull taste and disproportionately large stone. They were far too much hassle to be of any use, surely?

Turns out, unsurprisingly, that I was wrong.

So, armed with my trusty Thai tote bag and an iPod for company, I went foraging in the chill warmth of an early autumn afternoon. Half an hour’s picking yielded at least a kilo of berries, more than enough for a first attempt at making a haw jelly, or leather.

The first step is to transform these little berries into a gloopy mush. I used a large bowl and pestle (or mortar, I never know which is which) and then proceeded to break the bowl thanks to overly vigorous pounding. Thankfully by that point it was time adopt a more hands on approach and so after transferring the mixture, rolling up my sleeves and adding a little water to the now brown sludge, I squeezed and mashed the thick gloop with my fingers. A little more water and a little more mixing and the required consistency was reached without too much effort or any more broken bowls.

Instead of merely forcing the mashed fruit through a sieve – to separate out the stones and bits of twig et cetera – and leaving it to set, I decided to freestyle a little by adding a little apple juice, sugar and cinnamon and heating it gently in the hope that a softer and sweeter taste would emerge.

Being staggeringly high in pectin, haw ‘jelly’ will set without the addition of any sugar or any form of boiling. Within minutes you will notice the mixture thickening and taking on a far more solid feel. After an hour or so you should be able to slice the resultant cake.

After warming the jelly over a gentle heat and adding the extra ingredients, the colour and texture became increasingly fudge-like and the slight bitterness softened thanks to the addition of sweet apple juice and a little sugar.

Once cool, the jelly was sliced thinly and dried out in a low oven overnight to remove the water and give the leathers a near endless lifespan. Traditionally fruit like this would have been dried out in the sun and then offered essential nutrition throughout the winter months when fresh fruits were in stark supply. Things aren’t quite that bad for us, but small pieces of the haw leather stirred into warm porridge should be a tasty treat come the colder months.

Two new residents – Chickens

Well, we did it. We were going to wait until this weekend but the sight of an empty chicken hutch was just too much to take and so on Saturday we toddled off here, to Cambridge Poultry, to pick up two brand new house mates. And I am delighted to be able to introduce you to Marx and Eggels, the most revolutionary chicks this side of North Korea.

At the moment they are about sixteen weeks old and aren’t due to start laying for another month, or so, but in the mean time they should provide much amusement as they scratch around, eat bugs, crap all over the garden and gradually become accustomed to their new surroundings. Once they start to lay, we should see about 300 eggs a year from both of them giving us a bounty of fresh eggs for breakfast as well as a plentiful supply left over for baking and giving away.

Although we were trying to remain impartial, we quickly ended up ‘adopting’ one each. My girlfriend was keen for a traditional brown hen (ours is a Blacktail), whereas I plumped for something a little more unusual (a Nera). Once we got them home and into their new run, my dark-feathered Nera soon established herself as the more confident and cocky (excuse the pun) of the two and was quickly given the moniker Marx as de facto leader of this rebellious pairing.

They are wonderful to watch. So reptilian, like miniature, feathered dinosaurs with sharp beaks, keen eyes and Triassic looking claws. They miss little and any noises will have them craning their necks, heads darting to try and find the source of the sound. They seemed intrigued by a passing plane, only to be distracted by a large caterpillar that had foolishly (with a little help from me) wandered into their run. A happy, and sunny afternoon, passed quickly as we watched them do their thing.

Once dusk sets in, they should instinctively find refuge in their hutch but this being their first night, they were not keen to venture into their Eglu. It looked as if more drastic action might be called for and so the run was opened and we waited for them to emerge, poised to grab them as soon as they came close enough.

Eggels was happy to be picked up and hoisted into her new house, via the ‘egg hatch’. It was warm and cosy with a generous covering of straw. Marx, on the other hand, was both less keen and a lot faster than her passive collaborateur and made a break as soon as she saw an opening. Between my flailing arms.

The plot next to our house is an overgrown thicket of about an acre where brambles cross the pathways like mutated barbed wire and nettles grow in frightening abundance. Don’t let her go next door, said my girlfriend. Whatever happens, don’t let her go next door.

But as Tsar Nicholas II found to his cost, once the spirit of revolution has been aroused, there is little that can be done to suppress it and within a few moments, Marx had disappeared into the wilderness. Armed only with a pair of flip flops and a dying torch, I didn’t fancy my chances of finding her. Not that I said that to my increasingly panicky partner. I tried various calls: ‘Karl? Karl? Harpo? Groucho?’ hoping that she might respond to one but to no avail. She was as silent as the rapidly encroaching night.

I grew gradually more worried. There were certain to be foxes around. We’d had Marx less than six hours, surely we couldn’t lose her this quickly? Fairground goldfish survive longer than that. As I scanned the dying beam of the torch through the thick growth I thought I saw her red comb but it turned out to be no more than a cluster of unripe blackberries. A small movement close to my feet was just a small creature, most likely a mouse, running through the dead leaves. ‘Chico? Chico?’

Then my girlfriend spotted her halfway across the field. The wily chick had cleverly made a break for freedom via the undergrowth and as soon as she was clear headed for the open expanse behind the house. After chase of comic proportions, that I would have seen had I not been trapped on a bramble, she was caught, passed over the fence and wrestled into her hutch, the door shut firmly behind her. Panic over.

‘Running off in an apparent bid for freedom? Foraging absentmindedly in the overgrown forests with no thought for those left behind? Free range in the broadest sense of the word? She is so your chicken.’ Said my girlfriend.

I smiled with pride at this assertion.

Self Preservation, Part Two

Having raided the hedgerows, stripped the trees, harvested the vegetable patch and bought the necessary extras from the shops, we set down to transforming the vast array of fruit and vegetables in front of us into a selection of, hopefully, delicious preserves.

There’s something homely and warming, almost antiquated, about making chutneys and jellies, jams and alcoholic drinks. Although it was warm outside and only the merest hint of autumn was present, I had images of dark afternoons and crackling fires in the grate. In my head I was already enjoying the fruits of our labour as the snow came down outside in a soft translucent sheet. Sipping on sloe vodka and munching chunks of cheddar topped with tangy pickle whilst listening to the wind race through the gaps in our ancient front door.

But those times are far off and there was work to be done to before we could realise them rather than just visualise them.

Naturally, we started with the vodka. Making sloe gin, or vodka, is a simple process that takes no more than a few minutes once you have gone to the trouble of picking the berries themselves and stabbing each one with a pin three or four times (which is a real pain in the arse). These little round fruits look similar to blueberries but have an astringency that renders them almost inedible on their own. Although they can be made into a jelly, they really come into their own when turned into a sweet alcoholic drink.

Simply add them to a spirit of your choice with a load of sugar, give it a mix and leave it for about six months, giving it an occasional shake. After the allotted time, strain off the berries and bottle the purple liquor. It should taste pretty good by this point, but will get even better if you can hold off for another half a year. This really is sloe food.

Next up were the elderberries. The white flowers of the elder, so redolent of summer, quickly disappear only to be replaced with hundreds of tiny purple berries. These can be harvested and boiled up with a little water and, again, plenty of sugar. Once strained through muslin and heated to the correct temperature (about 110 degrees), a delicious jelly is the result. Hopefully we’ve made enough to see us through to next autumn, a great accompaniment to a multitude of warming winter dinners from roasts to stews.

For the chutney we turned to the many courgettes that our plants have provided us with over the summer. After roasting them, stuffing them, frying them, braising them and turning them into soup we were a little ‘courgetted out’ so decided to preserve the remainder. Even the most diligent gardener will miss a couple of these fast-growing fruits and large marrows are the inevitable end point and we had a few of these overgrown fellas just waiting to be chopped up and gently cooked with onions, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and plenty of spices.

Our largest pan proved to be a little too small to take the huge quantity of ingredients that we wanted to turn into jars of homemade chutney so we ended up buying a new cauldron sized pan perfect for making preserves and stocks.

Once all the fresh items had been chopped up, in they went to be cooked gently for three or four hours until the whole lot had reduced down and changed colour to a deep dark brown, a rich and sticky chutney, the smell of which warmed the soul and brought to mind those rich images of crackling log fires and cold winter evenings. I couldn’t wait to try it with a chunk of cheese, so I didn’t and spooned a little onto a slice of cheddar whilst it was still warm. Simple pleasures truly are the best.

Self Preservation, Part One

For the rural dwelling wild food fan, early autumn is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the year. With a profoundly disappointing summer (how I despise living up to the stereotype of an Englishman talking about the weather but it is relevant, and, according to anthropologists, performs an important social function but we’ll ignore that for the moment) the leaves have turned earlier and the hedgerows are positively aching under the weight of countless blackberries, the branches of apple trees bow thanks to the sheer number of fruit and the white flowers of the elder have turned into full clusters of tiny, deep purple berries. There is a banquet just waiting to be collected.

And so that’s exactly what we did.

The countryside that surrounds our house is vast and empty with numerous pathways and hedgerows crossing the fields from which to gather this wonderful bounty free of charge. We went out a couple of weeks ago armed with no more than a couple of bags and a keen eye and came back laden with tasty goodies.

Even though it was early and many of the blackberries on the brambles were little more than tightly packed red nuggets, there were a good number that were fully ripe, deep in colour and delightfully sweet. By the time we’d half filled a bag, my fingers (and lips) were stained with a familiar purple that beautifully illustrates the season.

The fruit of the blackthorn, also known as sloes, was also ripe and ready to be picked over to make a batch of sloe vodka. The hidden thorns can be a pain and I regretted not packing any gloves but the haul was worth getting scratched for, certainly enough to make a litre, or so, of sweet and leg-wobblyingly strong vodka that should be ready by this time next year.

We also came across two walnut trees whose fruit, the same colour as the leaves, was hidden within the thick canopy above us. It was hard work and involved a great deal of jumping and grabbing of branches but we ended up with two or three kilos of unripe walnuts (that bare no resemblance to the wrinkled little brains that they become once they’ve been cracked) to pickle, providing the shells haven’t begun to form.

Finally, we couldn’t pass up the thousands of elderberries that seemed to be covering every other tree along our route. By the time we returned home we had an entire bag full of bunches of these tiny little berries.

The plan was to transform this haul of fresh, seasonal produce, along with the glut of courgettes from the garden, into a series of jams, pickles, jellies, alcoholic drinks and chutneys, so after a trip to the supermarket to buy the necessary items we set to work…

Latest Article: Doing The Groundwork

I’m delighted to say that my latest article ‘Doing the Groundwork’ has just been published in the August issue of Home Farmer Magazine. You can buy the magazine at Borders and WH Smith stores nationwide. Alternatively, click here to buy online.

One hundred posts and a barbecued bunny

While I haven’t really been counting, I knew I was fast approaching a glorious century of posts – 100 food related musings. And, I suppose, I’d been thinking about how best to celebrate this achievement. Should I follow conformity and bake a cake? Perhaps a perfectly cooked steak frites with a béarnaise sauce would be more appropriate? Or maybe just a little mention, like above?

Ultimately it proved to be a moot point because according to my records, the last post I made was, in fact, my hundredth. I managed to forget my own blogging birthday. But in hindsight maybe it is better that way. There was no fanfare, no bunting and no over the top glorification. Just a simple pasta dish eaten in the sunshine, which is perhaps more in keeping with my general philosophy.

However, I’m not willing to let this milestone go completely unmarked so it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this, the 101st Just Cook It culinary tale. And how did I celebrate this epic feat? I barbecued a bunny.

A while back we were driving through the vast countryside of East Anglia and inadvertently came across a sign pointing the way to a game dealer. It was advertising all sorts of delicious items and there was little we (I?) could do to resist the lure of the wild. We followed the sign. And another one. And another one until a fourth directed us to a large farm.

We were greeted by a smiling and buxom woman who was a living caricature of a stereotypical farmer’s wife. I reckoned she had milked many a cow and churned countless churns of butter. She led us to a large outbuilding containing five enormous chest freezers which were flung open with happy abandon to display the staggeringly vast array of game within.

All the usual suspects were there – pigeon, pheasant, rabbit – but amongst the vacuum packed bits of flesh were other, more unusual animals like squirrel and boar. I was almost rendered silent by excitement before the disappointing realisation that I had just ten pounds in my pocket punctured the happy reverie I was in.

We chose judiciously, vowing to come back with deeper pockets and an empty freezer at home. Our final, but small, haul contained a couple of pigeon pies, a selection of mixed game with which to make a casserole, and a wild rabbit, which I had never cooked before. The pies were eaten that very night, complete with mashed potato and baked beans and the casserole cooked long ago but the rabbit remained in the freezer until last weekend.

We waited for an opportune moment to cook this magnificent creature. Having only eaten rabbit once, I was a little unsure what to do with it but was certain I wished to keep it as unadulterated as possible, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend who had her heart set on satay bunny. Not being too keen on the sweetened peanut taste of satay, I exercised my power of veto and announced that it was barbecue time.

Although it had been eviscerated and skinned, the heart, liver and kidney had been left in situ so these were carefully removed before the rabbit was jointed into legs, shoulders and loin. The whole lot was marinated overnight in a little white wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic and rosemary.

Whilst the barbecue heated up, some potatoes were par boiled and two of the courgettes from the garden thinly sliced, ready to be grilled over the hot coals. Our little barbie, an ideal size for two, sat on the ground outside the kitchen – a chair either side of it – and we warmed ourselves in the quickly cooling summer air. The larger pieces of rabbit – legs and shoulders – were cooked for about twenty minutes, the loin for about ten and the skewers of heart, liver and kidney for no more than three or four.

These were all kept warm while the potatoes and courgettes blistered and darkened over the hot coals. The whole lot was munched down outside with the heat from the barbecue keeping us from shivering. Dressed with a little tahini and yoghurt, the courgettes and potatoes were delicious, the slightly charred flavour accentuating the sweetness of the vegetables. The offal of the rabbit was no better than ok, perhaps it had been cooked a fraction too long, but the loin, legs and shoulders were delicious with a slightly porky flavour and a pleasant chewiness.

We ended the evening huddled close to the hot coals and me promising to cook satay rabbit before too long. Perhaps it will make an appearance in the 201st post, we’ll just have to see.

Lunch

Lunch always used to be a hurried affair. Most days I would wander out of the office and head down to the butcher or fishmonger (unless it was a Monday when both were closed) and see what looked tempting but I would never be more than ten minutes out of the office before I was once again sat in my swivel chair. And I don’t think this is unusual in any way. I know of no-one who takes a full hour, or even half an hour unless they have an ‘excuse’, like having a tooth extraction or undergoing hip replacement surgery. In the UK, at least, the lunch break is something of a misnomer.

Pity the poor French who still have the sacred lunch hour entrenched into their statute books. I expect it is hewn into solid rock, or at least written in indelible ink alongside the one that ensures a thirty-five hour week and instant capitulation in the event of invasion.

Those in Mediterranean Europe don’t fare much worse. Granted, it is rather hot during the midday hours, but there is no doubt in my mind that having a siesta after a lazy lunch is a better way to pass an hour or two than nibbling a sandwich al desko. They may work longer into the night but sacrifices have to be made to enjoy a more sedate pace of life.

So, now that I am no longer shackled to a desk and the sun has returned, lunch time has become a glorious window in the middle of the day. It shifts, tide-like, between the hours of about midday and half past two and often encompasses something from the vegetable patch.

This morning saw me tackling some of the more laborious tasks in the garden. We had neglected it somewhat recently and as a result there was a significant amount of work to do. The pea plants, having been decimated by three nefarious and hungry pigeons, had to be removed. They’d furnished us with no more than a token number of pods which, although sweet and tasty, it won’t be enough to grant them a place in our garden in the future.

In their place I planted some coriander and more beetroot, kale, spring onions and purple broccoli which has also been annihilated by the same pigeons that put paid to the peas. The grass was getting a little out of hand as well so I took the mower to it before heading into the kitchen with an armful of produce from the more productive of the two vegetable patches.
Sitting proudly at the centre of the nest of leaves on the kitchen counter were two shiny courgettes, dark green and still warm from the sun. Food as gloriously fresh as this should be eaten as unadulterated as possible and allowed to sing its own song, not lost amidst a choir of other ingredients and flavours.

Whilst I boiled some pasta, I sweated off half a red onion and some garlic in a generous glug of olive oil. After five minutes, in went the courgette, now roughly diced, and some quarters of cherry tomato. By the time the pasta was cooked al dente, the veg was ready. It was finished off with a few leaves of Greek basil, whose small leaves are packed with the unmistakable taste of basil, a little more chopped garlic and a handful of grated cheese.

I ate it lying on the freshly cut lawn, a fork in one hand and a book in the other, with the sun gently warming the backs of my legs; a world away from a pre-packaged sandwich hastily chewed down in front of a computer screen.

Ra-dish of the day

I am new to this gardening lark so the progress of the veggie patch has rendered me awestruck over the past few weeks. The tiny seeds that we planted back in April seemed to take forever to become seedlings and force their way through the earth. I checked them three or four times a day hoping to see a mini shoot parting the softly compacted compost filling the little trays in which we had planted everything. I’ve never been particularly patient so this whole ‘slow-lane’ life was something I would have to get used to, and quickly. If that makes any sense.

Eventually, they began to peep through, each little green shoot seemingly identical – only a series of hastily written labels informing us what was what. By the time they were ready to be planted into the ground, the soil had been warmed by the early May sun and a healthy amount of compost dug into the beds. They suddenly looked small and vulnerable, like they were toddlers about to have their first day at playschool and I wondered whether they would survive the harsh realities of life outside of a plastic greenhouse.

But survive they did and soon it was possible to tell them apart. The peas grew thin pasta like feelers with which to grab onto the bamboo canes we had planted them next to. The kale began to take on a dark purple tinge. The salads started to grow leafy and full, their soft plumes of green filling the bed and offering a seemingly endless supply of tasty lettuce. And the courgettes attempted to undertake some sort of bid for freedom, like some aggressive floral lebensraum.

By my reckoning they are expanding by a couple of square metres every day. They seem to double in size whenever my back is turned, expansive leaves encroaching onto the lawn, hiding the dark green fruits underneath. At this rate they will reach the coast in about a month. Nestled in between the courgettes and the leaves are the familiar pale yellow flowers which are delicious raw in salads as well as stuffed with spinach and ricotta before being deep fried.

But not all of the veggies have been a success. The radishes were, quite frankly, pathetic. Visually, they were amusing – a rag tag collection of Laurel and Hardy comedy roots, some swollen and distinctly radish like, others pathetically thin and whispy as if they had been stretched out of all recognition. The taste was disappointing too. I like a radish to have a bit of bite. I want to know about it when I pop one in my mouth. It should clear your sinuses, send a rush of pain up your nose and leave your eyes watering as if someone has just scraped your retina with a scalpel. The full frontal facial assault I was expecting did not materialise. it was more of a tickle than a barrage. Although the leaves, when tossed in a sharp vinaigrette, do make a pleasant enough salad.

But this is just part of the learning process, merely the beginning and there are plenty more where they came from. Luridly coloured rainbow chard, beetroot, potatoes, broad beans, butternut squash and purple broccoli are still yet to offer up their wares. Little red fruits are appearing on the cherry tree in the front garden and the herbs, sitting happily in small pots, send the occasional wave of fragrance towards the open kitchen door. This is summer.

Cutting costs – free food

To be perfectly honest, it would be a lie for me to say that we are feeling the pinch. This is the first time either of us have had to worry properly about things like bills, food shopping, mortgage payments and the price of oil so we have no point of reference. Having just bought a house and under no illusions as to the amount of money I could make from writing, we were prepared for some serious belt tightening, credit crunch or no credit crunch. For all we know it would have been this way even if the world’s economy were still sitting prettily atop the crest of a tempestuous wave of credit.

In addition to this, neither of us has ever been particularly extravagant. Aside from having to curb an enthusiastic album buying habit which took hold with a disturbing voracity towards the end of last year, I’ve not really noticed any major upheavals.

In fact, there have been a few of unexpected bonuses – we eat healthier food (less meat, for a start), we drink less alcohol, we can read the hundreds of books that sit as yet unread on our bookshelf and we can power through a series of great DVD box sets that were bought frivolously some months ago and remain unwatched.

On the food front, things got even more interesting with the arrival of a pocket-sized book called ‘Food for Free’ by Richard Mabey. This wonderful little tome, originally published in 1972 offers a wealth of information on over 100 edible plants, berries, fungi, seaweed and shellfish that can be found in the British Isles.

Eager to try out our new guide, improve our foraging skills and attempt to eat for nothing we headed out last night for a walk; gloves, scissors and bags in hand ready to be filled with nature’s finest bounty. Or at least that was the plan.

Things began well when we came across an abundance of low-lying nettles, still a long way off flowering therefore still perfectly viable eating. I gathered half a bagful with the intention to make a nettle soup. We moved on and almost immediately saw a long line of elders complete with bunches and bunches of their recognisable tiny white flowers. I turned to page 66 in my little pocket book.

‘Elderflowers can be munched straight off the branch on a hot summer’s day, and taste as frothy as a glass of ice cream soda.’

Woah, this was good news. I love ice cream soda and I was starting to get a little parched from all that walking. What better way to slake my thirst than with some fresh elderflower? I snipped off a small cluster, took a tentative sniff and bit off a sizeable clump.

After a brief chew my mouth was awash with a bitterly unpleasant taste. I realised that I had been drastically mis-informed as to the deliciousness of raw elderflowers and my girlfriend failed to stifle a hearty giggle as I spat and attempted to clean my tongue with the back of my hand. After a few moments there was a mildly discernable hint of the taste I recognise as elderflower, but it certainly didn’t have the frothiness of a glass of ice cream soda. This Mabey chap should have his tongue looked at.

There was a flurry of excitement further down the track as we identified what we thought was chamomile and then sorrel. Sadly our woodland powers aren’t quite strong enough yet and a little nibble suggested that neither was what we thought.

Still, we had gathered enough nettles for a hearty and healthy soup and a bagful of flowers – enough to make a decent quantity of elderflower cordial or maybe even wine. And none of it had cost us a penny. Satisfaction indeed.

Punching above their weight

One of the first things we said that we would do when we moved to the countryside was buy chickens. Real live clucking, pecking, laying chickens so that we could have the freshest organic eggs possible. Unfortunately, these have gradually slipped down the shopping list to make way for more essential items such as a sofa or bookcases to house the many hundreds of books we’ve collected over the years. And to be perfectly honest, I can barely look after courgettes and kale so it is probably best that I get used to tending plants before I’m entrusted with something that breathes and craps.

The benefit of living the rural life though is that we don’t have to go very far to get our eggs even though we haven’t invested in any hens ourselves as yet. A mere four houses down the road is the extent of the distance we have to travel to buy eggs laid by happy birds free to see the sky above or peck at worms and bugs below.

We usually go for plain old hens’ eggs, occasionally stretching to duck eggs if we are feeling indulgent – the yolks are larger and richer and they poach beautifully thanks to their freshness. But in addition to these conventional ova, quail and bantam eggs are also on sale.

Now, I’ve never really been able to see the point of quail eggs. They make a relatively good garnish. If you are crafting a selection of canapés, for example, then a fried quail’s egg sitting proudly atop a morsel of toasted truffle brioche is a delicious mouthful but they have little everyday application.

I was also unfamiliar with the bantam breed until quite recently. These are about half the size of a traditional brown hen with eggs proportionally smaller which is why we’ve never really bothered with them before. It would seem that we aren’t the only ones and our egg people struggle to sell them, instead they gave us a box for free on Saturday morning for which we were truly grateful and curiously intrigued.

They are an absolute revelation. On cracking one into a hot pan, I was surprised by how much egg managed to fit into such a small shell. The yolk was a deep yellow and larger than any supermarket yolk I’ve ever seen. It took less than a minute to cook and, once done, I slid it onto a waiting slice of home-baked bread, lightly toasted and generously buttered so that a little of the butter dribbled over the side. Topped with no more than black pepper and a few flakes of sea salt, this was comfort food at its delicious and simplistic best – guaranteed to force and smile and convince me that these bantams pack a serious punch.

***
I couldn’t write a post about chickens without mentioning the fantastic ‘Chicken Out’ campaign for a free-range future. Sign up here.

A Pheasant Experience, Part Three: Pie From The Sky

After three gloriously culinary days in the Swedish capital I’m feeling invigorated and inspired with a burning desire to record each and every single detail of my trip, but before I launch into the most recent gastro-recollections there is the small matter of the newly plucked pheasant to deal with.

Where once we had a full-feathered bird, we now had something that resembled a recognisable foodstuff – a young and plump example of a bird that I’ve eaten occasionally but never truly appreciated until my hands-on experience. The feathers were gone, the guts and head removed and now all that remained was to find some way to do justice to this magnificent creature. I turned to the champion off all things simple, tasty and British, a man who refuses to even grant a nod of recognition to the health police: Fergus Henderson.

His book, ‘Nose to Tail Eating’ is a veritable manifesto of wholesome, and ever-so-slightly adventurous cuisine. It isn’t food that turns the stomach in the same vein as a globetrotting extreme eating adventure, more a celebration of food that has long been out of fashion but, thanks mainly to Henderson who is considered a revolutionary champion in the food world, is making a resurgent comeback. Perhaps it is a product of the current economic climate, but there seems to be an increasing interest in the ‘fifth quarter’ and those cuts that can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of the leaner parts of the animal. There is also a burgeoning realisation that it is just not viable, either economically or environmentally, to raise an animal only for the majority of the meat to end up on the scrap heap. So, with the freshest and most local meat I have ever had the simple pleasure in obtaining, I picked his book off the shelf and flicked to the section on ‘Birds and Game’.

Whilst roasting the bird, complete with a hefty amount of streaky bacon to prevent it from drying out (pheasants, like the majority of game, have little fat and so can quickly become frustratingly dry within minutes), was one option, I felt that this particular pheasant warranted more attention and thus we plumped for the ‘Pheasant and Pig’s Trotter Pie with Suet Crust’. Although it might be worth noting that this is not food for those following a strict dietary regimen, I’d rather treat myself occasionally to something in this bracket and eat sensibly during the week rather than face eating a series of insipid ready meals, misleadingly marketed as ‘healthy choice’, or ‘low-fat’. But that’s just me.

This is slow food: not particularly challenging, labour intensive or time-consuming but the finest example of what Anthony Bourdain refers to as ‘culinary alchemy’ when something magical happens behind the oven door and the long slow cooking process renders the traditional peasants’ cuts tender and delicious. The sort of cooking that is perfect for the weekend and can be completed in three or four short bursts of kitchen based activity.

First off, the trotters needed to cook in red wine and stock and a chunky mirepoix of vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, leek and garlic) complete with bay leaves and peppercorns (this combination is the cornerstone of slow food). Three hours was sufficient and once the cooking liquor had been strained and reserved the meat was stripped from the trotters and set aside. A hefty chunk of unsmoked bacon was then thinly sliced and fried in duck fat with four onions (thinly sliced) before being placed in a roasting dish with the trotter meat.

Finally it was time for the glorious pheasant which had mellowed overnight but still retained that familiar gamey tang. After being portioned into four, it was browned in the remaining duck fat then perched atop the fragrant pile of pork in the roaster. The cooking juice was poured over the top and the whole thing was covered in foil then placed into the oven to undergo its magical transformation. After filling the house with increasingly powerful and delicious smells (there is little that can beat the warming and homely intensity of meat cooking in wine and stock), it emerged from the oven to cool enough to strip the meat from the bones.

We strayed from the recipe slightly by using vegetable suet instead of the beef variety for the pastry but it made little difference and there was a frisson of excitement as the lid was rolled onto the pie dish, filled to the top with this unusual pheasant, porcine and wine combination. A little egg yolk brushed over the top completed the process and it went back into the oven for a final time.

Forty minutes later we had our pie: a golden crust like a quilted covering for the delights that lay beneath. A warm breath of enticing steam raced through the lid as the spoon cut through the pastry and I felt a pride in what had been created. It was the first time I’ve felt a profound and genuine connection with the food on my plate borne by the knowledge that I’d been involved in the entire field to fork process. My enthusiasm for such culinary adventures remains unbounded and I hope there will be many more to come. And the taste? Completely, utterly and totally delicious, made even more so by a vast spoonful of Heinz Baked Beanz and generous slop of tomato ketchup on the side.

For more on Fergus Henderson, click here (St. John Website)

A Pheasant Experience, Part Two: Plucking Hell

I knew that there was a vast, epic, sprawling world of difference between a nicely pre-packaged pheasant neatly presented in a butcher’s window and the actual real-life bird, but I did not appreciate the actual feathered physical reality of it until very recently. After contemplating the task I was about to undertake I steadied myself with a large glass of wine before reaching for my instruction manual – an excellent book originally released in the early 1960’s by an unwittingly hilarious fellow called W.M.W. Fowler. ‘Countryman’s Cooking’ is not just a superb cookbook but also an excellent read that harks back to a gentler age when the raging inferno of feminism was but a gentle glimmer and it was possible to write witticisms such as ‘having fortified your pasty maker with a couple of stiff gins, let her loose with some flour, lard, a bowl and a rolling pin’ without fear of scathing repercussions.

Aside from such occasional, accidental and innocently archaic interludes, the book also has passages that are eerily prescient today with some prophetic ideas about the potential damage of intensive farming and the declining popularity of wild food, such as rabbit. But that was for another day: my immediate concern was where to begin with my pheasant, a bird Willie Fowler held in such high esteem that he devoted the entire first chapter to it.

My mind, beginning to feel the numbing effects of alcohol, was developing a genteel confidence – immediately shattered on reading the words ‘the pheasant is the most tedious of all birds to pluck’. I let out an audible sigh, reached again for the wine and carried on reading. ‘Holding the bird in the left hand begin plucking at the back of the neck about three inches above the shoulders and pull the feathers out one at a time.’

Although the evening was growing cold, this was not a job for the kitchen and so it was to the garden where, bird in left hand, I cautiously grasped a single feather and pulled. And nothing happened. So I pulled again a little harder this time and still failed to remove the tenacious little thing. My third attempt could have wrenched Excalibur from the stone and sure enough after offering brief resistance, the feather popped neatly out of the bird’s skin between my fingers. One down, a mere thousand, or so, to go. I made myself comfortable and carried on, stopping only occasionally to imbibe more wine.

After half an hour I stopped to assess the progress I hadn’t made and found myself nodding in agreement with old Willie – this surely was a tedious process. My girlfriend emerged from the kitchen and looked at me sympathetically, and then at the growing pile of feathers between my feet which were making their way across the lawn at the merest hint of a breeze. ‘Do you think you should pluck into a bag?’ she asked. I nodded humbly by way of agreement and attempted apology.

After another ten minutes of plucking (into a bag) my patience began to wane and, having exposed enough of the breast, I picked a sharp knife from the kitchen and began to skin it instead. This proved a much faster and infinitely more satisfying approach and before long the bird was bereft of both feathers and skin apart from a small, shit-covered, clump around the parson’s nose which I was less keen on removing. This, I assumed, was what my guide euphemistically named the ‘vent’ and was where the gutting would begin, a process I wished to put off for as long as possible.

The head and neck were removed with ease using a pair of scissors and I was left looking for the crop, a ‘bag made of thin membrane situated at the base of the throat.’ It was then pointed out that that I should ‘try not to break it and you will save yourself the trouble of clearing up the resulting mess.’ Had I read down the paragraph a little earlier I would probably have taken more care not to puncture this small bag full of partially digested food that let off a deeply foul stench as it seeped over my fingers but I paid the price for my eagerness. After a few deep breaths and a healthy glug of wine I managed to fight back the rising tide of vomit that was gradually making its way up from my stomach thanks to the smell of rotting organic matter that was residing within the crop and was readying myself for the gutting.

My new best friend, Willie Fowler, devotes just two sentences to the evisceration procedure: ‘make a longitudinal cut from just below the breastbone to the vent. Insert the first and second fingers of the right hand and hook out the insides’, and I am sure that to the hardened countryman this is a simple process akin to putting on a tweed cap and wax jacket. But to a wet-behind-the-ears fledgling as myself this was not the easiest of matters to attend to. It required a firm hand and significant mental fortitude, neither of which I possess at the best of times, let alone a bottle of Rioja down.

Under the guiding light of a torch held by my intrigued and attentive partner, I made the cut and peered into the belly of the beast trying to see a way in. there wasn’t one so I just rolled up the sleeve of my jacket and followed the simple instructions that had been lain out to me. In went the fingers and out flopped the guts, with little effort on my part. It was as if they were just waiting to make their escape. How such a small bird can have so many insides I’ll never know but there they were slopping into a plastic bag between my feet slowly leaching red onto their feathery bed.

And so it was over. I’d done it without squealing in horror or recoiling in fear or fainting or being sick quietly in the corner. Granted, my senses had been numbed by a significant quantity of wine but we now had in front of us an oven ready bird that just two hours previously (yes, it took that long) had been hanging in the garage complete with head, feathers and insides. I’d passed successfully through my own rite of passage, gone through a faintly traumatic liminal stage and emerged triumphant on the other side.

I highly recommend Countryman’s Cooking, an intelligent and thought provoking read, not to mention an excellent cookbook.
Click here to find out more about the book (Daily Telegraph article), or click here to purchase it (Amazon.co.uk)

A Pheasant Experience, Part One: A Bird In The Hand

Any ethnography will contain a substantial section on ‘rites of passage’. The study of anthropology places much attention on these transitionary periods because they appear to be something of a universal, common, in some respect, to all human societies. They mark the transition from one phase of life into another, often involving some sort of test to prove that one is worthy of inclusion. A rite of passage combines three distinct phases: separation, when the subject is ‘removed’ either physically or metaphorically, from their previous existence, a ‘liminal’ period where they are effectively in limbo – neither one thing or another, often incorporating some sort of ‘test’, and an ‘inclusion’ where they are welcomed back from their exile and begin enjoying the trappings that come with their new status.

If all this sounds a little exotic and foreign think again. Baptisms, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, drinking society initiations, 21st birthdays, graduation – these all contain the three basic elements common to all rites of passage. This may all seem a little off topic for a food related blog but I like to educate as well as inform and record the myriad of culinary adventures that make up a vast proportion of my existence. Plus it is related in a rather circuitous fashion as I underwent a personal rite of passage, of sorts, last week.

Contrary to what many of the larger supermarkets would have us believe, meat doesn’t grow in neat little packages ready to wrap in plastic and place into a chilled cabinet. It actually comes from living, breathing fur and feather covered animals which need killing, skinning, gutting and chopping up before they arrive in those neat little packages. They have heads and eyes and hearts and guts (lots of guts) and a whole body full of less than pleasant bits which have got to be removed before those sanitised pieces of flesh can be put in the oven or frying pan and chewed down in a spirit of gentle innocence and slight ignorance as to where they came from. Meat can now be enjoyed without even considering the consequences or chain of events that led to it being arranged on a plate with some tasty veg and gravy.

This really wasn’t intended as a standing on soapbox style rant, honestly. More a precursor to explaining my little initiation ceremony into the warm embrace of life in the country which involved the dubious privilege of transforming a full creature, squidgy bits and all, into something worth eating.

It started with a pheasant in a field. A dead pheasant in a field that was easily accessible without breaking too many laws regarding trespassing or poaching. I vaulted the fence with the gentle grace of a heavily pregnant sow and picked up the dead bird to give it a once over and a good sniff, just to make sure that it hadn’t been mauled by a passing predator or been dead long enough for the smell to make me dry heave. Thankfully it looked, and smelt, fresh, a small hole in the breast suggesting a glancing shot had caused its death. After meeting the approval of my incredibly understanding and equally intrepid girlfriend we took the bird home and hung it up the garage for three days which we were informed was an optimum length of time for those who don’t like their game to be too ‘high’.

There was something strangely macabre and slightly medieval about seeing a dead pheasant swinging from one of the beams in the garage, as if some horrific lynching had just been carried out by a feathered mob and the image stayed with me for some time even after the garage door had been shut. And there it hung for three days until the time came for me to make my first foray into plucking and gutting.

To be continued…

NB – there is a photographic record of the entire event. If there is enough interest, it shall be included.