SHE’S GAME FOR A CAREER CHANGE
Surveyor Sophie sells ready meals... made from pheasants she’s shot
SOPHIE Bagley has always regarded pheasant as a tasty and nutritious meal rather than simply a colourful bird. Her husband Matthew, however, took a different view.
But after tricking the fussy eater into eating a lasagne made with the game bird, she realised there could be a gap in the market for pheasant ready meals.
Now two years later the chartered surveyor is running a one-woman industry from her Yorkshire cottage during the shooting season and turning up to 300 pheasants a week into hundreds of meals more commonly associated with other meats.
Beside lasagne there’s bolognese, Italian meatballs, coq au vin, cottage pie, chilli con carne and even ‘crispy duck-style’ pheasant and pancakes, all made from pheasant instead of beef, lamb, chicken or duck.
Between October and February Mrs Bagley, 43, tours the countryside in her Range Rover to pick up as many pheasants as she can from shoots. On some days she will pluck more than 100 in the garage of her cottage near Boroughbridge, North
‘It’s free-range and sustainable’
Yorkshire, before heading to the Aga in her kitchen. She isn’t averse to shooting the birds herself if needs be, but says she’s a dreadful shot.
All the ready meals, which cost from £7.50 for a double portion, are prepared using pheasant fresh from the moor and with local ingredients. She hopes her business, Glorious Game Ltd, will bring the ‘underappreciated’ meat to a wider audience.
Mrs Bagley, who grew up in rural Scotland where pheasant was plentiful, said: ‘I’m a country girl, born and bred, and have always been frustrated at the bad press pheasant gets. Everyone’s default is chicken, but pheasant is much better for you. It’s had a better life, it’s free range and sustainable.’
The game meat is leaner, lower in cholesterol and more proteinrich than chicken, she said.
To her frustration her company director husband, also 43, always said he didn’t like pheasant. ‘I thought if he doesn’t know it’s pheasant, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,’ said Mrs Bagley. ‘I made him a pheasant lasagne, and he said it was the best lasagne we’d had for ages.
‘I’ve a number of friends who have refused to eat pheasant if I’ve cooked it for a dinner party. So I’ve been experimenting on them and not telling them.
‘Half the time, if you turn it into something people recognise then you can almost trick them into believing it’s what they think it is.’ The food went down so well that she realised the business potential. ‘No one wants to do the gory bit – the plucking and everything else. So I thought: Present it as something people recognise, and they’ll be more likely to give it a go.’
She has secured a good supply from shoots and cooks the meals in batches before packaging them ready for the microwave.
The meals, which can be cooked from frozen, are currently available only at Yorkshire markets but she plans to develop her website to sell them online nationwide.
Debbie Collins, of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said: ‘Pheasant is a seasonal, local, versatile and nutritious food source. Sophie’s recipes sound delicious. Good luck to her.’