The weather this week has been autumnal -- rainy, cold, windy -- so no further wood-chopping for me. However, I had to drop something off in town today and was able to persuade OH to go for a walk with me and, on our way back, swing by the allotment.
OH went foraging in our local fishmonger's, who also does game, and fell for 2 pheasants for £6. Pheasants round here are ubiquitous but we've never tried them before. I've only known them as roadkill but of course they're bred to be released across the fields and then shot by the gentry as a form of decadent weekend entertainment so each pheasant comes with its forelock still firmly attached. You have to eat them very carefully in case they're full of lead shot. That's not something you'd ever encounter with a chicken.
However, apart from the grotesque and socially ultimately unsupportable feudal structures behind hunting pheasants, as meat, they actually seem to me quite sustainable. The food miles are minimal -- the birds we took home were probably shot less than 10 miles from here. They had a life as close to normal as you'd hope. Low extra costs in rearing them -- no sheds needed, no or very little feed... The only environmental issue there is the lead shot. But I can't think of any other way of despatching wild birds, or game in general, in a more humane fashion. If the hunting party could manage to drive the birds into a giant gas cloud, a self-generated miasma of dog breath, after shave, booze fumes and pie-and-ale farts, that would be humane. But I don't think we're quite there yet, as a society.
OH was feeling like a stove-top dinner again so he prepped the birds in a casserole and filled it with the Random-family special-special red cabbage stew (the cabbage was from the plot), some scrumped apples from next door's tree, lots of OH's home-brewed cider, onions, bacon bits and -- for me this was the most successful bit -- sweet chestnuts roasted on the stovetop, peeled and then added to the stew to soften them up. Onto the hot stove it all went for an hour and a half.
In the meantime, I made a humungous amount of Bavarian dumplings (Semmelknoedel) out of leftover bread rolls, with lots of home-grown parsley. I also boiled some fresh broccoli florets just harvested from the plot that afternoon.
The stew and the side dishes worked out really nicely. The pheasant was gamey and went very well with a bottle of OH's gorgeous elderberry wine. Although on balance, I probably prefer the humble chicken leg as my all-time favourite meat, I do like the taste of game and am looking forward to having more of it this winter. Our fishmonger has a sign in the window advertising fresh rabbits. The next instalment of the Living Like Kings series is booked.
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