Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Game Cookery
Woodpigeon Braised woodpigeon with blackberries uses the whole bird so there’s no waste, says Lee Frost
t the end of January, some shooters might put their guns away and that is the last they will see of them until the autumn. However, pigeon shooting during the summer months sharpens up your game shooting and is great fun. I do a lot of pigeon shooting at this time of year, and my recipe for braised woodpigeon is a great one to try now, when the blackberries are ripening and you have had a good outing. Also, there is no waste at all as it uses the whole bird, including the heart and liver. We recently trialled this recipe in one of the restaurants we supply and it has gone down very well. It is a good autumn dish.
A lot of people will only take the breast off a pigeon and discard the rest, but by
A46 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE braising the bird, the meat falls off the bone and you find you get more meat than you are expecting from the legs, which people often dismiss as not worth cooking.
If you are not sure about using the hearts and livers you can leave them out, but I’d recommend leaving them in — most people love the dish when they have tried it with them. The hearts and livers enrich the dish and make it unctuous, autumnal and very gamey, while the blackberries give it a bit of tartness and sweetness.
The woodpigeon is probably the easiest bird to pluck — chop the wings off and you can pluck one in about a minute. If you want to make a big batch of this dish you can simply double all the ingredients and it freezes well.