Is it just me or do all chef’s hearts sink on August 31st and you realize its “Pheasant Season” again. Usually we are reminded by our friendly, helpful meat supplier (or ‘Purveyor of High Class Meat and Poultry, licensed to sell Game’) who on the first day of the season rings to offer you the first birds.
The more astute chefs will question the purveyor about hanging times when it will transpire that these offerings are the scrag end of last year’s shoot, mercifully put to death at the end of the season and frozen for their debut a year later.
Having politely refused these sad creatures (pheasant is dry enough without being frozen for months) we make a deal to have an order from the first shoot when they have hung for a bit and then start planning menus around them knowing it is a very popular dish with the dining out public.
Now I have a problem with game because I am not particularly fond of it myself and find it hard to assess the quality of a dish that I am not partial to. What really gets me is whether it is necessary to shoot pheasants all.
Only an idiot would believe the things are actually wild. They’re bred in captivity, let out into a friendly forest, fed on corn and generally nurtured; free range perhaps- wild never. They get so fat their ability to fly just about gets them into a tree to avoid foxes killing them and to provide a target for so called sportsmen.
It is a bizarre situation and therefore so terribly British that most game is shot by someone who pays for the privilege, is not interested in the product and thereby subsidizes the price to the consumer. A lot are shot by amateurs, averagely successful business men, accountants and bank managers whose concept of the countryside comes from watching a couple of episodes of Emmerdale Farm. They get an idea in their heads that putting on a Barbour and green wellingtons and striding through the bracken with a shotgun and a dog will make them a country squire for the weekend. It goes without saying that they are a lousy shot, shooting anything as soon as it moves resulting in birds that look as though they have been machine gunned.
These mangled specimens are, of course, useless for the pot but even the less peppered ones are a difficult raw material to present attractively. With luck they will have been plucked and eviscerated by your supplier (if not remember you’ll be doing overtime). But there is a further catalogue of problems. Firstly bones will be broken by the impact of lead shot, so when trussed it will look like the bird equivalent of the Hunchback of Notre Dame apart from the fact that pheasant bone splinters are hard and sharp.
Sometimes the shot ruptures parts of the intestine and internal organs giving the rear end of the bird a delightful green tinge. You may discover on jointing or carving the birds the occasional blood clot. Does this scenario sound familiar:- You’re up to your arm pits in a busy service. A favoured customer orders pheasant and sends you out a drink just so you know its him. You know and I know there is no favouritism, you cook the same for everyone, no bigger portion no special deals. But hey! You’ll probably meet this guy afterwards and you want his praise, he’s a real person not just a number on an order chit, so you find yourself picking out the choicest, the plumpest, the most seamless pheasant, you cook it with care, tending it so it will be point cooked, juicy and tender. You taste the sauce seasoning it and balancing the flavour. You joint that perfect leg laying it on the sauce just so. You plan to carve the breast and fan it out next to the leg. You cut into the meat of the breast and there it is buried in the deepest part of the flesh, a big, undercooked, dark, bloody blood clot.
And then there are the fur balls, Pheasants have a sort of down under their feathers and because pieces of lead shot are spinning as they are propelled from the gun they get wrapped in this fur prior to being plunged into the flesh:- a rather unpleasant sort of larding process. I think you may be beginning to see why they are not my favourite dish. I won’t even begin to go into my prejudices on extensive hanging of game save to say that anyone who enjoys all that and prefers it rotting into the bargain might benefit from care in the community.
Now a solution - perhaps. Has anyone thought of farming pheasants? Seeing as they are half farmed any way wouldn’t it be kinder when they reach their peak of edibility to despatch them as humanely as possible so they can reach the table looking less like a casualty of war and more like a piece of meat. I for one would happily pay more and those bank managers and accountants can go and do a bit of target practise.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
St Valentine's Day Rant
‘……. and definitely no heart shaped puddings, croutons, chocolates, starters, potatoes or garnishes’, I conclude when the staff ask if we are doing anything special for Valentine’s night?’
The telephone rings.
‘Are you doing anything special for Valentine’s night’
I take a deep breath tempted to say: ‘Yes, I’m banning all parties of two who book three months before the event knowing that they wouldn’t normally eat here, and when they do just because it happens to be some trumped up celebration kept alive by money grubbing firms who use every opportunity to extract cash out of people they are usually miserable, dull, pernickety, unsophisticated and bourgeois’, but what I actually say is:
‘No, just the usual menu at the usual price’.
I refuse point blank to commercialise it. I will not advertise in the local paper with their predictable line drawings of people holding hands over a dinner table. I will not order roses at over inflated prices ‘for the ladies’. I am certainly not going to put on a sick, smoochy selection of tired croonings about ‘lurve’ on the stereo by Barry Manilow or Michael Ball or Phil Collins ……. deep breaths…. .. deep breaths…… keep calm. The commercialisation of Christmas is bad enough, and trust a saint to put his oar in six weeks after the supposed birth of Jesus and six before his demise. Was he working for a greetings card firm or perhaps Interflora to notice a gap in the market and say, ‘Hey, six weeks after Christmas, having felt gloomy through January, paid off their credit cards, possibly having finished the remnants of the turkey as soup, curry and rissoles, people will be ready to celebrate something - ANYTHING. And if the bunch that come are anything like the usual crew and are supposed to be the last of the true romantics then God help us.
It seems a strange way to celebrate love anyway - sitting opposite each other in a public place for two hours and stuffing your faces with food and drink. I can think of much better things to celebrate in this way. How about a Sex and Debauchery night - eat and drink as much as you can and then see if you’re capable of anything sinful after that.
According to my research Saint Valentine was a third century Christian martyr who was clubbed to death for helping persecuted Christians. He seems an unlikely icon to spawn a billion cheesy cards and as many cheap sentiments. What is more likely is that it was originally a pagan festival celebrating the start of the bird mating season and as with most of our festivals had some Christian symbolism grafted onto it.
Perhaps I’m biased but I just do not understand this association of food with love and sex. I know film makers use eating as an allegory for sex but that is because they can’t always show the real thing. Advertisers try to sell us every thing from cars to chocolate bars with heavy sexual innuendo- ‘Just me and my Magnum’ - Yes, thank you, we get the point. The meat association’s advertising campaign called ‘Recipe for Love’, now that was a leap of the imagination, getting us to associate a lump of flesh from the back of an animal with love. I suppose their reasoning is that to cook a meal for somebody is an act of love - so that’s why I feel exhausted after cooking fifty meals.
The problem for restaurants is that you could fill the restaurant five times over in theory but what you end up with is only 65% occupancy because they are all twos. The ways of overcoming it are not always acceptable. Cramming in lots of small tables is not very practical, asking people to share tables would be unpopular to say the least. The nearest you get to a compromise is to do two sittings. But I haven’t yet had the courage to suggest a ‘make love first, eat later sitting’.
The heart symbol for love and romance is rather gross when you start to think about it. Luckily it is very much removed from the real thing by being an approximation in shape and usually made out of chocolate or pink satin. It would be a brave restaurant that served stuffed heart or heart shaped steak tartare on Valentine’s night. Do we still really believe the heart to be the organ for all this emotional stress. I think not, we are far too sophisticated for that. We realise the brain is where it all stems from causing the heart to respond by beating faster. Stomachs too are very sensitive to emotion - they lurch, flutter and contract probably more than the heart. But its too late to change a few thousand years of tradition. ‘I love you with all my gizzard’ - nah, I don’t think so.
The telephone rings.
‘Are you doing anything special for Valentine’s night’
I take a deep breath tempted to say: ‘Yes, I’m banning all parties of two who book three months before the event knowing that they wouldn’t normally eat here, and when they do just because it happens to be some trumped up celebration kept alive by money grubbing firms who use every opportunity to extract cash out of people they are usually miserable, dull, pernickety, unsophisticated and bourgeois’, but what I actually say is:
‘No, just the usual menu at the usual price’.
I refuse point blank to commercialise it. I will not advertise in the local paper with their predictable line drawings of people holding hands over a dinner table. I will not order roses at over inflated prices ‘for the ladies’. I am certainly not going to put on a sick, smoochy selection of tired croonings about ‘lurve’ on the stereo by Barry Manilow or Michael Ball or Phil Collins ……. deep breaths…. .. deep breaths…… keep calm. The commercialisation of Christmas is bad enough, and trust a saint to put his oar in six weeks after the supposed birth of Jesus and six before his demise. Was he working for a greetings card firm or perhaps Interflora to notice a gap in the market and say, ‘Hey, six weeks after Christmas, having felt gloomy through January, paid off their credit cards, possibly having finished the remnants of the turkey as soup, curry and rissoles, people will be ready to celebrate something - ANYTHING. And if the bunch that come are anything like the usual crew and are supposed to be the last of the true romantics then God help us.
It seems a strange way to celebrate love anyway - sitting opposite each other in a public place for two hours and stuffing your faces with food and drink. I can think of much better things to celebrate in this way. How about a Sex and Debauchery night - eat and drink as much as you can and then see if you’re capable of anything sinful after that.
According to my research Saint Valentine was a third century Christian martyr who was clubbed to death for helping persecuted Christians. He seems an unlikely icon to spawn a billion cheesy cards and as many cheap sentiments. What is more likely is that it was originally a pagan festival celebrating the start of the bird mating season and as with most of our festivals had some Christian symbolism grafted onto it.
Perhaps I’m biased but I just do not understand this association of food with love and sex. I know film makers use eating as an allegory for sex but that is because they can’t always show the real thing. Advertisers try to sell us every thing from cars to chocolate bars with heavy sexual innuendo- ‘Just me and my Magnum’ - Yes, thank you, we get the point. The meat association’s advertising campaign called ‘Recipe for Love’, now that was a leap of the imagination, getting us to associate a lump of flesh from the back of an animal with love. I suppose their reasoning is that to cook a meal for somebody is an act of love - so that’s why I feel exhausted after cooking fifty meals.
The problem for restaurants is that you could fill the restaurant five times over in theory but what you end up with is only 65% occupancy because they are all twos. The ways of overcoming it are not always acceptable. Cramming in lots of small tables is not very practical, asking people to share tables would be unpopular to say the least. The nearest you get to a compromise is to do two sittings. But I haven’t yet had the courage to suggest a ‘make love first, eat later sitting’.
The heart symbol for love and romance is rather gross when you start to think about it. Luckily it is very much removed from the real thing by being an approximation in shape and usually made out of chocolate or pink satin. It would be a brave restaurant that served stuffed heart or heart shaped steak tartare on Valentine’s night. Do we still really believe the heart to be the organ for all this emotional stress. I think not, we are far too sophisticated for that. We realise the brain is where it all stems from causing the heart to respond by beating faster. Stomachs too are very sensitive to emotion - they lurch, flutter and contract probably more than the heart. But its too late to change a few thousand years of tradition. ‘I love you with all my gizzard’ - nah, I don’t think so.
SERVICE CHARGE
My head hurts, my feet ache, and I’m only half way through the afternoon. I still have the rest of the prep to do and a busy service that probably won’t finish till around midnight. I am a bit concerned whether I can cope with it. It must be something to do with it being a week of hectic nights and the over zealous sampling of the new half bottles last night that has put me in this state; but hell, I’ve coped with more, feeling worse and no doubt I’ll do it again.
By 6.30, with some surprise, I realise I’ve done most of my main jobs, sorted through the fridge, taken all the debris through to the kitchen porter and cleaned down my work surface. Now just the mise en place [wonderful phrase mise en place, no proper English equivalent ]. That and ‘Merde’ is probably the only culinary French I still use.
The waitresses have arrived getting the restaurant ready for service and putting a bit of glamour into our lives. Then the first customers walk through the door and suddenly the whole machine shifts into first gear. Three orders later everything is moving along on oiled wheels; Pans clatter, fat sizzles, flames leap, knives chop, orders are barked. Four or five orders later, two main courses out of the way and we are out of top gear and into overdrive. My headache has gone and my feet don’t ache. I’m moving from stove to fridge, weaving, pirouetting, dodging in a well choreographed and practised routine. I’m reaching from top to bottom shelves, doing more knees bends than in the average work out. My mind is juggling orders, timing and judging cooking accuracy remembering garnishes, strategically planning the next move, all in micro-seconds. Not only do I feel great, I’m actually enjoying myself. It’s a challenge pitting your wits against anything they can throw at you. And all because of …… Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause - let’s hear it for ADRENALIN. Those little glands on top of the kidneys pumping out the wonder drug that makes you capable of almost anything.
There is something about a busy service in a kitchen that is unique. Emotions have a raw edge; you feel and show anger, frustration, elation. Repartee and wit is faster, funnier, more acute and barbed. It’s not like the office, the shop or the factory floor; you can’t keep up pretences or present a carefully prepared front to your work colleagues - it would crumble in minutes. There is a camaraderie born of the fact you experienced it together, supported each other and came through it bowed and bloodied but unbroken.
A few years ago I was working with a young chap who had just finished training - he was keen and hungry and one of the fastest chefs I have worked with. One particular Saturday night we were overbooked with more people than we would normally do. But we prepped up, psyched ourselves up and hit it head on. After the last main course had gone out and we surveyed the debris of our glorious battlefield I said: ‘Well how do you feel after that?’ and he punched the air and said: ‘I feel like I could conquer the world’. He then looked a bit sheepish and embarrassed as if he’d gone a bit over the top. But to me he had just summed everything up.
The qualities required to do this job transcend gender, race and class. I’ve worked with all sorts of people: men, women, gay, straight, French, African, German, toffs, commoners, punks, and anarchists, and it all comes down to the same thing: can they hack it during a busy service. It is stimulating, therapeutic, emotionally charged, physically draining, creative, exciting, challenging and never 100% satisfying.
When I interview people for kitchen work I try to ascertain whether they are a nervous type. You can’t ask people outright because they tend to deny it thinking it is not a trait to be proud of. But I view it as a bonus. Nervous types have the mental agility, the physical nimbleness and the sense of urgency that a busy service requires, best described by someone once as ‘controlled panic’. Maybe their adrenalin spills into their blood stream quicker or perhaps they need to channel that nervous energy into something.
Just when you think you are never going to catch up; that the orders are coming infaster than you can churn out the food; just when that bastard difficult pudding order comes in when everyone is frantic you suddenly realise you’ve actually got the last order. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an express train coming the other way. Things begin to wind down. The last main course goes out. At this point I et everyone a drink and apologise to anyone I snapped at, and then we start to clear the debris and clean the kitchen down. We have another drink, someone cracks a joke and we’re all laughing - a release after all that tension. Adrenalin and alcohol makes a nice combination. That and relaxing makes you mildly high. We sit down and have a chat after work and have another drink. It’s impossible even to think about going to bed for some time yet. Let’s open another bottle of wine - I’m going to feel like ‘merde’ in the morning.
By 6.30, with some surprise, I realise I’ve done most of my main jobs, sorted through the fridge, taken all the debris through to the kitchen porter and cleaned down my work surface. Now just the mise en place [wonderful phrase mise en place, no proper English equivalent ]. That and ‘Merde’ is probably the only culinary French I still use.
The waitresses have arrived getting the restaurant ready for service and putting a bit of glamour into our lives. Then the first customers walk through the door and suddenly the whole machine shifts into first gear. Three orders later everything is moving along on oiled wheels; Pans clatter, fat sizzles, flames leap, knives chop, orders are barked. Four or five orders later, two main courses out of the way and we are out of top gear and into overdrive. My headache has gone and my feet don’t ache. I’m moving from stove to fridge, weaving, pirouetting, dodging in a well choreographed and practised routine. I’m reaching from top to bottom shelves, doing more knees bends than in the average work out. My mind is juggling orders, timing and judging cooking accuracy remembering garnishes, strategically planning the next move, all in micro-seconds. Not only do I feel great, I’m actually enjoying myself. It’s a challenge pitting your wits against anything they can throw at you. And all because of …… Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause - let’s hear it for ADRENALIN. Those little glands on top of the kidneys pumping out the wonder drug that makes you capable of almost anything.
There is something about a busy service in a kitchen that is unique. Emotions have a raw edge; you feel and show anger, frustration, elation. Repartee and wit is faster, funnier, more acute and barbed. It’s not like the office, the shop or the factory floor; you can’t keep up pretences or present a carefully prepared front to your work colleagues - it would crumble in minutes. There is a camaraderie born of the fact you experienced it together, supported each other and came through it bowed and bloodied but unbroken.
A few years ago I was working with a young chap who had just finished training - he was keen and hungry and one of the fastest chefs I have worked with. One particular Saturday night we were overbooked with more people than we would normally do. But we prepped up, psyched ourselves up and hit it head on. After the last main course had gone out and we surveyed the debris of our glorious battlefield I said: ‘Well how do you feel after that?’ and he punched the air and said: ‘I feel like I could conquer the world’. He then looked a bit sheepish and embarrassed as if he’d gone a bit over the top. But to me he had just summed everything up.
The qualities required to do this job transcend gender, race and class. I’ve worked with all sorts of people: men, women, gay, straight, French, African, German, toffs, commoners, punks, and anarchists, and it all comes down to the same thing: can they hack it during a busy service. It is stimulating, therapeutic, emotionally charged, physically draining, creative, exciting, challenging and never 100% satisfying.
When I interview people for kitchen work I try to ascertain whether they are a nervous type. You can’t ask people outright because they tend to deny it thinking it is not a trait to be proud of. But I view it as a bonus. Nervous types have the mental agility, the physical nimbleness and the sense of urgency that a busy service requires, best described by someone once as ‘controlled panic’. Maybe their adrenalin spills into their blood stream quicker or perhaps they need to channel that nervous energy into something.
Just when you think you are never going to catch up; that the orders are coming infaster than you can churn out the food; just when that bastard difficult pudding order comes in when everyone is frantic you suddenly realise you’ve actually got the last order. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an express train coming the other way. Things begin to wind down. The last main course goes out. At this point I et everyone a drink and apologise to anyone I snapped at, and then we start to clear the debris and clean the kitchen down. We have another drink, someone cracks a joke and we’re all laughing - a release after all that tension. Adrenalin and alcohol makes a nice combination. That and relaxing makes you mildly high. We sit down and have a chat after work and have another drink. It’s impossible even to think about going to bed for some time yet. Let’s open another bottle of wine - I’m going to feel like ‘merde’ in the morning.
Rules of Catering
There are two dates in the caterer’s calendar when all involved feel like giving up, selling up or throwing their hands up in despair. These times are at the end of August and the Christmas and New Year holiday. You feel worn down by the continuous grind of business pressure, never having five minutes respite and problems piling on top of other problems not yet resolved. At all other times of the year we are confident, happy, urbane, smiling and generally full of good cheer. All businesses have their crosses to bear, but in the catering industry with all its complexities we probably get more than our fair share. These problems that are an intrinsic part of running a business are what make it challenging and should be tackled with a philosophical, positive attitude and a readiness to learn. Having said that you can on bad days think that Sod and Murphy are alive and well and perched firmly on either shoulder. Below are some of the things I have learnt through my years in the business. You will recognise some and probably be able to add a few of your own. I am sorry if it sounds a little pessimistic but there is a useful side to pessimism in that if you expect everything to work brilliantly and it doesn’t you will be constantly disappointed. But by expecting the worst and it not necessarily happening is a pleasant surprise - that’s how I keep smiling.
THE RULES
THE RULES
- It is always when there is a lull in dining room conversation that someone drops a tray of glasses in the kitchen.
- Parties booked before eight o’clock will be late, those booked at eight o’clock will be on time, and those booked later will be early. Meaning that with all best planning in the world fifty people will be piling through your door at eight o’clock demanding food and drink and blaming you for bad organisation if they have to wait any longer than two and a half minutes for anything.
- Noise levels in dining rooms increase in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.
- The decibel level of the loudest conversation in the dining room is in inverse proportion to the amount of thought going into it.
- The party that decides not to have starters will choose the main courses that take the longest to prepare.
- People become 100% more charming as soon as they have a drink and some food in front of them.
- It is never the people having the interesting conversation that invite you to join them after dinner.
- Those people who try to economise on their evening will have longer faces than those who splash out.
- If there are candles on the table someone will start playing with the wax.
- If five things go wrong in and evening it will always be to the same table.
- It will always be at the busiest point of the evening that the party of eight ask for eight separate bills and can’t remember what they had.
- The customer is not always right but it’s a jolly good idea to let him think he is.
- The amount of highly involved ritual that a person puts into choosing, perusing, mouth swilling and gargling his wine is in inverse proportion to how much he knows about it.
- If a party chooses the main course you have run out of, they will also choose two wines you haven’t got and the pudding that’s off the menu.
- The least romantic people always seem to book first for Valentine’s night.
- The ceoliac, the anaphylactic, the vegan and the person allergic to garlic always come on the same night and only inform you when you go to take their order.
- On the hottest night of the year there is always one elderly person who comes to dinner wearing a cardigan and a jacket which they refuse to part with, orders soup and then has a fainting fit and blames you for it being too hot in the dining room.
- The main course that hasn’t sold all week suddenly becomes the most popular dish on a Saturday night when you’ve only got five portions.
- It is the people who eat every last scrap of food on their plates who can’t see the irony when they complain that the food was inedible.
- People booked at seven o’clock always arrive at ten to seven.
The Pheasants are Revolting
Is it just me or do all chef’s hearts sink on August 31st and you realize its “Pheasant Season” again. Usually we are reminded by our friendly, helpful meat supplier (or ‘Purveyor of High Class Meat and Poultry, licensed to sell Game’) who on the first day of the season rings to offer you the first birds.
The more astute chefs will question the purveyor about hanging times when it will transpire that these offerings are the scrag end of last year’s shoot, mercifully put to death at the end of the season and frozen for their debut a year later.
Having politely refused these sad creatures (pheasant is dry enough without being frozen for months) we make a deal to have an order from the first shoot when they have hung for a bit and then start planning menus around them knowing it is a very popular dish with the dining out public.
Now I have a problem with game because I am not particularly fond of it myself and find it hard to assess the quality of a dish that I am not partial to. What really gets me is whether it is necessary to shoot pheasants all.
Only an idiot would believe the things are actually wild. They’re bred in captivity, let out into a friendly forest, fed on corn and generally nurtured; free range perhaps- wild never. They get so fat their ability to fly just about gets them into a tree to avoid foxes killing them and to provide a target for so called sportsmen.
It is a bizarre situation and therefore so terribly British that most game is shot by someone who pays for the privilege, is not interested in the product and thereby subsidizes the price to the consumer. A lot are shot by amateurs, averagely successful business men, accountants and bank managers whose concept of the countryside comes from watching a couple of episodes of Emmerdale Farm. They get an idea in their heads that putting on a Barbour and green wellingtons and striding through the bracken with a shotgun and a dog will make them a country squire for the weekend. It goes without saying that they are a lousy shot, shooting anything as soon as it moves resulting in birds that look as though they have been machine gunned.
These mangled specimens are, of course, useless for the pot but even the less peppered ones are a difficult raw material to present attractively. With luck they will have been plucked and eviscerated by your supplier (if not remember you’ll be doing overtime). But there is a further catalogue of problems. Firstly bones will be broken by the impact of lead shot, so when trussed it will look like the bird equivalent of the Hunchback of Notre Dame apart from the fact that pheasant bone splinters are hard and sharp.
Sometimes the shot ruptures parts of the intestine and internal organs giving the rear end of the bird a delightful green tinge. You may discover on jointing or carving the birds the occasional blood clot. Does this scenario sound familiar:- You’re up to your arm pits in a busy service. A favoured customer orders pheasant and sends you out a drink just so you know its him. You know and I know there is no favouritism, you cook the same for everyone, no bigger portion no special deals. But hey! You’ll probably meet this guy afterwards and you want his praise, he’s a real person not just a number on an order chit, so you find yourself picking out the choicest, the plumpest, the most seamless pheasant, you cook it with care, tending it so it will be point cooked, juicy and tender. You taste the sauce seasoning it and balancing the flavour. You joint that perfect leg laying it on the sauce just so. You plan to carve the breast and fan it out next to the leg. You cut into the meat of the breast and there it is buried in the deepest part of the flesh, a big, undercooked, dark, bloody blood clot.
And then there are the fur balls, Pheasants have a sort of down under their feathers and because pieces of lead shot are spinning as they are propelled from the gun they get wrapped in this fur prior to being plunged into the flesh:- a rather unpleasant sort of larding process. I think you may be beginning to see why they are not my favourite dish. I won’t even begin to go into my prejudices on extensive hanging of game save to say that anyone who enjoys all that and prefers it rotting into the bargain might benefit from care in the community.
Now a solution - perhaps. Has anyone thought of farming pheasants? Seeing as they are half farmed any way wouldn’t it be kinder when they reach their peak of edibility to despatch them as humanely as possible so they can reach the table looking less like a casualty of war and more like a piece of meat. I for one would happily pay more and those bank managers and accountants can go and do a bit of target practise.
The more astute chefs will question the purveyor about hanging times when it will transpire that these offerings are the scrag end of last year’s shoot, mercifully put to death at the end of the season and frozen for their debut a year later.
Having politely refused these sad creatures (pheasant is dry enough without being frozen for months) we make a deal to have an order from the first shoot when they have hung for a bit and then start planning menus around them knowing it is a very popular dish with the dining out public.
Now I have a problem with game because I am not particularly fond of it myself and find it hard to assess the quality of a dish that I am not partial to. What really gets me is whether it is necessary to shoot pheasants all.
Only an idiot would believe the things are actually wild. They’re bred in captivity, let out into a friendly forest, fed on corn and generally nurtured; free range perhaps- wild never. They get so fat their ability to fly just about gets them into a tree to avoid foxes killing them and to provide a target for so called sportsmen.
It is a bizarre situation and therefore so terribly British that most game is shot by someone who pays for the privilege, is not interested in the product and thereby subsidizes the price to the consumer. A lot are shot by amateurs, averagely successful business men, accountants and bank managers whose concept of the countryside comes from watching a couple of episodes of Emmerdale Farm. They get an idea in their heads that putting on a Barbour and green wellingtons and striding through the bracken with a shotgun and a dog will make them a country squire for the weekend. It goes without saying that they are a lousy shot, shooting anything as soon as it moves resulting in birds that look as though they have been machine gunned.
These mangled specimens are, of course, useless for the pot but even the less peppered ones are a difficult raw material to present attractively. With luck they will have been plucked and eviscerated by your supplier (if not remember you’ll be doing overtime). But there is a further catalogue of problems. Firstly bones will be broken by the impact of lead shot, so when trussed it will look like the bird equivalent of the Hunchback of Notre Dame apart from the fact that pheasant bone splinters are hard and sharp.
Sometimes the shot ruptures parts of the intestine and internal organs giving the rear end of the bird a delightful green tinge. You may discover on jointing or carving the birds the occasional blood clot. Does this scenario sound familiar:- You’re up to your arm pits in a busy service. A favoured customer orders pheasant and sends you out a drink just so you know its him. You know and I know there is no favouritism, you cook the same for everyone, no bigger portion no special deals. But hey! You’ll probably meet this guy afterwards and you want his praise, he’s a real person not just a number on an order chit, so you find yourself picking out the choicest, the plumpest, the most seamless pheasant, you cook it with care, tending it so it will be point cooked, juicy and tender. You taste the sauce seasoning it and balancing the flavour. You joint that perfect leg laying it on the sauce just so. You plan to carve the breast and fan it out next to the leg. You cut into the meat of the breast and there it is buried in the deepest part of the flesh, a big, undercooked, dark, bloody blood clot.
And then there are the fur balls, Pheasants have a sort of down under their feathers and because pieces of lead shot are spinning as they are propelled from the gun they get wrapped in this fur prior to being plunged into the flesh:- a rather unpleasant sort of larding process. I think you may be beginning to see why they are not my favourite dish. I won’t even begin to go into my prejudices on extensive hanging of game save to say that anyone who enjoys all that and prefers it rotting into the bargain might benefit from care in the community.
Now a solution - perhaps. Has anyone thought of farming pheasants? Seeing as they are half farmed any way wouldn’t it be kinder when they reach their peak of edibility to despatch them as humanely as possible so they can reach the table looking less like a casualty of war and more like a piece of meat. I for one would happily pay more and those bank managers and accountants can go and do a bit of target practise.
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