Game Cookery

Puy lentils are the king of pulses, their earthiness acting as a perfect foil for the richness of braised duck legs and venison, says Rose Prince

My mother was a cook ahead of her time. I must have been a teenager, some 40 years ago, when she made a dish of French Puy lentils for lunch.

I had never eaten a lentil in my life and was not even keen on beans and peas, so I struggled with the little brown discs that had been simmered with garlic, herbs and meat stock. Too earthy for a young palate, too… brown. Everyone else loved them, praising her innovation and resourcefulness.

Lentilles du Puy were unavailable in Britain at that time, but to the French they have long been monarchs among pulses, so to speak. Unlike their various cousins, including the many types of dal from Asia,

Ingredients FOR THE LENTIL BASE:

250G PUY LENTILS

1 CLOVE GARLIC, PEELED AND CRUSHED

4 SPRIGS THYME

100ML RED WINE

2TBSP DUCK OR GOOSE FAT

1 ONION, FINELY CHOPPED

2 GARLIC CLOVES, CHOPPED

250G VENISON STEAK, CUT INTO 3CM PIECES

2 DUCK LEGS, SKIN REMOVED AND MEAT DICED

HALF A GREEN PEPPER, THINLY SLICED

2TSP SMOKED PAPRIKA

1TSP DRIED THYME

500ML CHICKEN OR MEAT STOCK

CHOPPED PARSLEY, TO SERVE

Puy lentils do not cook to a mush and have a slight al dente bite to them.

The texture that I had found so strange at first is actually the characteristic that has made them such a popular feature on great menus. I came to love them, too, after that initial scepticism.

Later, living in London, I was lucky to eat at Marco Pierre White’s first restaurant, Harveys. He made lentils the star of one of his dishes, serving the humble pulse alongside a great tranche of goose foie gras. They were braised in red wine with garlic and thyme.

I later mined the recipe from him and began making them for my own dinners with friends. I found that their unpretentiousness made them the greatest foil for more extravagant companions and game is perhaps their best partner of all. Rich meat needs modest vegetables, goes my rule.

It is important to seek out the authentic lentils from Puy in central France. They

“Pause, by the way, to admire their pretty, flint, grey-green marbled outer surface”

have a PDO (protected designation of origin) and are grown in volcanic soil, which gives them a distinctive mineral flavour that I have never found in other green lentils.

Do pause, by the way, to admire their pretty, flint, grey-green marbled outer surface before they go in the pot.