Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Globetrotter’s guide to the world’s larder
Chef and food writer Rose Prince clocks up the virtual air miles in a quest to learn more about some of the finest wild game recipes
Only a few weeks ago we were thinking of Rudolph and his friends so it may seem heartless to consider a plate of renskav. But in northern Sweden, this ancient dish, made by salting then cold-smoking reindeer, still brings tears to the eyes of hardy Scandinavian hunters, who would cut it thinly then cook it in a pan — as with bacon — out in the open air.
Originally, renskav was prepared in a kåta, a primitive smokehouse made using the hide of the reindeer and wood from birch trees stripped of their bark, in a process that took two days. Learning of its existence led me to the great and varied topic of Swedish game eating.
It is a country that is remarkable for the variety of wild species sustainably hunted for food, where cooking and eating it is taken for granted, perhaps more so than in Britain. Those who eat game in the UK — the more the better, of course — never think much further than our own gamebirds and deer species.
Yet how about moose, blue hare or capercaillie? No, me neither, but the discovery of the delicious-sounding Swedish game menu does beg a question: what in the world do the world’s hunters hunt?
For a period, I used to attend an annual book festival in Sharjah. Without knowledge of British military history, it is unlikely this tiny Emirate is on your conscience. Although slotted beside Dubai, it sparkles much less with glass high-rise buildings and has preserved more of its old Arab culture in the city’s covered markets.
Among stalls selling the most astonishing plethora of dates will be the occasional shop selling birds and here will sit the
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favourite companion of the Bedouin: falcons. Of course, we know that, in medieval Britain, a falcon was the ultimate hunting tool, but we rarely keep them. In the Emirates, however, they are still bought as status-assuring household pets.
Not that your average falcon owner will use their falcon as they once did — hunting with raptors is the preserve of only the very privileged these days. It will not come as a surprise to discover that this is because there is little for them to actually pounce on mid-air.
Their main quarry, the houbara bustard, was more or less hunted
“The invading Moors from Morocco took cooking styles and ingredients to Spain”
to extinction. I’d have been interested to taste houbara, a shy bird that lived on the region’s plains and which must have had an interesting diet. The Arab people believe it to have aphrodisiac benefits, a quality that is never good for wild populations — think rhinos. Needless to say, the poor houbara is now rare.
Authentic recipes
There are happier hunting stories. From the Gulf, take a trip south into the African continent, where possibly my very favourite edible bird — the guinea fowl — is indigenous.
Driven guinea fowl or guinea hen shooting is popular in several African countries, especially in South Africa and Tanzania. This led me to something of a revelation. Of course, it is an African bird, yet one that has been joyously accepted as European on our menus due to the fact that it is relatively easy to farm.
The French love their pintade and my earliest memories of eating guinea fowl are in that country, where it is cooked gently with red wine and wild mushrooms, its leg meat becoming wonderfully sticky and sweet. No other domestic bird has the same qualities, let alone a gamebird.
Its adoption has a fraudulence, though, when you imagine how it can be cooked in its real home. I trawled the recipe-soaked internet for an authentic dish and found one from Ghana in West Africa that sounded sumptuous.
The birds are browned, then braised with onion, garlic, chilli and tomato and served with a peanutbased sauce and millet polenta. I can imagine how a guinea fowl’s sturdy flesh does well in a dish like this and I vow to address its real roots in a similar way next time. This little world tour of game cooking has changed my views of it forever.
To Morocco and another gameloving nation. Rural Britain may be beautiful in the shooting season, but imagine swapping the freezing damp for a trip to hunt for wild boar or shoot quail, pigeon and partridge in the Atlas Mountains during a sunny autumn. Roam through forests, trek across plains — no wellies needed — then end up sitting by the pool discussing your trophies and misses. It must be heaven for enthusiasts.
Tender quail
From a cook’s viewpoint, or anyone who loves to eat, there is the added bonus of game cooked in the style of the region. North African cooks are experts with charcoal, so you might enjoy grilled spatchcock partridge or tender little quails on skewers. From the oven, there could be a slowly cooked wild boar tagine or, if you’re lucky, pastilla.
I have eaten these extraordinary pies in Marrakesh, filled with tender pigeon or dove — also hunted in Morocco. The filling, which is wrapped in many layers of warqa pastry, similar to filo, is a peculiar mixture of shredded slow-cooked meat, toasted almonds, spices such as saffron and cinnamon, and sweet cooked onion. After baking, the pie is dusted with sugar and more cinnamon. The sweetness seems odd at first, but it makes perfect sense with the crisp pastry.
The invading Moors from
Morocco took their cooking styles and ingredients to Spain, leaving an indelible imprint. Saffron, for example, features in Spain’s bestknown dish, paella, and many others.
The original paella was made with pigeon and snails, not the chicken and seafood version holidaymakers know. But the best I have eaten was one made with Spain’s favourite gamebird, the red-legged partridge.
An authentic paella can only be called that if it is cooked outdoors, otherwise it is often merely known as a ‘rice’ or arroz. The paella that
I mention is known as the pilgrim’s paella. Its chief ingredients — apart from, of course, the short-grained bomba or Calasparra rice — are partridge and freshwater crayfish. I love it because the dish brings to mind the romance of those spiritual travellers, scouring the countryside as they made their long journeys, trapping what they could to make a sustaining meal, cooked over a fire.
In my search of the Americas for unusual game quarry, I found many recipes for eared dove. Specifically, these come from Argentina, where this bird is shot in huge numbers. It is not uncommon for one Gun to bag 1,000 birds in a day. There are an estimated 50 million doves in north Cordoba, so it seems relative.
Like pigeon, a young bird will be tender if carefully roasted, but it adapts well as an ingredient in South America’s many famous recipes: as a filling in empanadas, the little pastry pies typically flavoured with sweet red pepper; sauteed and eaten wrapped in a taco; or perhaps the most interesting recipe of all, pickled or escabeche, a recipe with Portuguese origins.
The doves are seasoned and fried, then stewed with wine, carrot, garlic, spices and herbs such as juniper, bay and paprika. Vinegar is added as a preservative — not too much — then the dish is cooled and stored for up to 24 hours. It is eaten reheated with plenty of warm, crusty bread.
Native hunters
Gamebird shooting in Australia is mainly concentrated on wildfowl, directed at various wild duck or teal species. More interesting to the tourist are the unique indigenous species and the history of hunting.
The First Nation Australians used boomerangs to flush birds from tree branches in order to confuse them into flying towards their nets. Another weapon was the throwing stick that, if applied with the right force, would disable the target.
Kangaroos were once important sustenance in Australia, but it has been reported that the children’s drama series Skippy turned almost a whole nation off eating both kangaroo and wallaby. They are culled anyway — in the way we cull our huge population of deer — and the meat is enjoyed by harder-edged Antipodean gourmands. The flesh from a wallaby reared in a pristine environment makes excellent carpaccio, one brave chef has claimed, while kangaroo butcheries sell every cut, including the tail meat. Cooked on the bone, it is as unctuously good as our own oxtail stew, say admirers.
So much more can be taught about the world’s wild larder and the role every population plays in its existence. When Nordic chef René Redzepi, of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant, visited Australia, he gently reprimanded the country for not celebrating its natural, wild meat supply. He was right, since Scandinavian nations probably eat more hunted wild species than any other western culture.
The global larder is fascinating, the very spice of a good life. This has been only a short, perhaps preliminary, foray into its marvels. I will leave you with a thought. There is one country where hunting for game is notably rare: China. Need any more be said?
“First Nation people used boomerangs to flush birds”