FINE DINING

Seared pigeon and special fried rice looks delicious (Cookery, 3 February). I absolutely understand that Shooting Times is trying to encourage some inventiveness with regards to game cookery, and has long done so. I looked at the ingredients list and my heart sank. I could tick off much of the list as standard cupboard content for a keen cook. But the rest?

We’re not all pro-cooks like Tim. There were ingredients here I’d never heard of, let alone stored. Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, rice wine vinegar, jasmine rice, Thai shrimp paste, Chinese chilli oil. I had no problem with the six or eight skinless pigeon breasts, of course.

Can we have some roughshooter friendly, simple, standard ingredient recipes please? A newcomer picking up the magazine might feel an inadequacy attached to the act of shooting and preparing food for the table.

Ian Barnett, Norfolk

The Editor responds: I tend to agree. I’ve always either roasted birds whole, made a casserole or made goujons. I did once stretch to partridge Kievs. I assumed I was one of the less adventurous few but maybe I’m one of the less adventurous many. I shall speak to our food writers. We do have a piece on venison offal coming up that I’m looking forward to. (The heavyweight of the falcon world, 3 February) might become extinct if global warming continues at the current pace.

Leaving aside such questions as what the ‘current pace’ is and what causes what I will term ‘climate change’ rather than ‘global warming’, I question whether such extinction is likely. Falcons have lived on this Earth for about 10million years.

During this period the average temperature of the

Earth has been much warmer than it is at present and much warmer than even the worst alarmist predictions. Only 100,000 years ago temperatures were some 3.5°C higher than today. Temperatures were also considerably warmer during the Holocene Optimum 4,000 to 6,000 years ago and even during the Roman Optimum 2,000 years ago. I would therefore