It is almost the end of the pheasant season but during the Christmas holidays some of my boys and their father were invited to join a shooting party in Kincardineshire.They enjoyed a day of trampling in beautiful Scottish countryside, in the snow; a privileged experience.They handed me a gun card with their names printed amongst the guns and talked of ‘winging a pheasant’ and in spite of their minimal input to the bag, it was decent, comprising: 125 pheasants, 11 woodcock, 8 woodpigeon and a jay giving a total of 145 birds. The boys and father returned home physically quite exhausted but happy and with a brace of pheasants each.
We hung the pheasants for a few days and insisted that the boys helped with the plucking and gutting. I wasn’t sure how they were going to react to this task; would they, excuse the pun, pluck up the courage and get on with the messy task?
Our only girl had already told tales of earning extra loot, at a shooting lodge last August by ‘dealing with’ the game. Grouse, of course, are smaller and she gave a blow by blow account of the smell and difficulty of burning those annoying, fine, tiny hairs off the plucked skin. The boys did the plucking outside, in the snow (to placate a mother who hates housework here) and only one pheasant ended up being skinned. Sometimes, it is in fact, easier to skin a pheasant but we encouraged them to pluck and not tear the skin.
Coco, the black labrador is rather good at catching rabbits and the older boys are happy to skin and joint her rabbit offerings - if they are Myxomatosis free. Rabbit, like most game, is a low fat meat. Indeed, the promotion of game as a healthy option is now being encouraged in Scottish schools by the Scottish Deer Management, in partnership with, The Cairngorms National Parks. It is now a project with Scottish Government funding. Children learn about deer in the wild, their tracks and signs and stalking on the hill. Then they visit a game larder to see how venison is processed. I have been involved in the final, hands-on classroom cookery sessions. Although, to date, the projects have been in rural schools this project has huge potential. The children left with a clearer understanding of Scotland’s natural environment and the need for deer management. The cooking of the venison introduces it as a low fat, healthy product. We made a couple of dishes; one simple meatball recipe uses an adapted tomato sauce recipe from Kids’ Kitchen. The verdict on the meatballs as aired by a child, to the nation on Radio Scotland: “Great, better than normal meat”.
Send me at email, if you would like the recipe.
Your venison meatballs sound delicious.
ReplyDeleteMy mother always made my brother pluck his own birds. I'm glad you're doing the same. It's amazing how good and fast you can get at it with practise!
Miss W