Young in the field

Lockdown has ended the freezer’s seeming endless supply of pheasants. But how far should one go to refill it? Editor Jonathan Young contemplates weird food

GIVEN I’ve eaten some unusual food – flying termites fried in palm oil, raw rotted Greenland shark – I might be disqualified from criticising China’s more exotic cuisine. We might not consider fruit bats a delicacy but they’re often eaten in Asia and it wasn’t hard to find a lavishly illustrated bat soup recipe.

“Place bats in a large kettle and add water to cover, ginger, onion, garlic and salt. Bring to a boil and cook for 60 minutes. Strain broth into a second kettle. Take the bats, skin them and discard the skin. Remove meat from the bones and return meat, and any of the viscera you fancy, to the broth.” Nor was it an effort to unearth pangolin recipes, mostly a variation on pangolin and mushroom soup but also one extolling the nutritional value of fried rice cooked with pangolin blood.

Having never viewed our own horseshoe and pipistrelle bats with a cook’s eye – and conscious they’re protected – I can’t speak of bats’ table qualities. But they and pangolins do fall into my mental category of things a bit too weird to eat. And how much better we all would be if the customers in Wuhan’s wet market had shared that view.

We do have our own strange food, of course. I knew a man who once slow-casserolled a fox and another who had a secret arrangement with a vet attached to a zoo. Whenever the vet was called in to destroy an animal, he would secrete a fillet and give it to my friend for a dinner party. Okapi was pronounced delicious, bongo less so.

It’s also part of folklore that badger hams make a jolly supper, the Western Morning News noting in 1941 that, “the diet of badgers is different from that of foxes; except in spring, when they eat many young rabbits, badgers do not themselves consume much flesh and there is no reason why they should not be good to eat. They are said to taste much like pork, but travellers say that bear meat provides a closer comparison.”

But as with bats, I cannot vouch for Brock’s edibility, though some of my gnarlier chums profess fondness for badger hams, having picked up and jointed a roadkill.

Now, I have nothing agin a little roadside shopping and did so frequently when younger and poorer. Squashed squirrels’ tails were amputated for fishing flies and undented pheasants were worth a U-turn. The real prize, however, was a freshly-killed roe (its sell-by-date easily established if you take the same road on the daily commute). These really helped ease the domestic meat bill though carcass preparation had its moments. Not possessing the proper stalker’s game larder and winch, I made do with hanging the hocked beast from a rope lashed over a garden tree. On one occasion, having risen early to do the deed, I was skinning away when I heard an explosion of feet come out of the backdoor, looked up and saw a gaggle of seven-year-olds standing silently behind me. I’d forgotten my child’s sleepover party. “He’s killed Bambi!” yelled one, while the daughter merely muttered, “Bloody hell. It’s Ray Mears.”

Yet whilst my vehicular hunter-gathering produced endless casualty casseroles I drew the line at badgers. Some things are best left on the Tarmac. And besides, I now have two chest-freezers stuffed with game killed in orthodox fashion. Or rather they were.

Freezer pheasants are like magician’s handkerchiefs: you pull one out and there’s always another, and another, and… No matter how many we roast, boil or curry the supply never ceases. And yet, after months of lockdown, we have achieved the seemingly impossible and cleared them out. Even those that I suspect are older than the dogs.

Much of what’s left consists of the gourmet fowl, forcing awkward culinary decisions. Much as I love my family, will they all appreciate properly roasted woodcock? Not as much as many of my shooting mates. Would a savoury medley of goose – greylag and Egyptian – end with cleaned plates or in the Sealyhams’ bowls? And there are only enough teal for two, not four.

Thankfully, everyone at home loves pigeon breasts and the weather has been fine enough to barbecue them. However, even they are running low thanks to what a friend keeps calling ‘CORVID-19’. The spring drillings attracted a flood of woodpigeon to the field outside my study on which I have permission to shoot. It was so steady that I had to switch off the video camera during electronic chats with my colleagues lest they notice my attention had drifted.

For four days, the pigeon poured over and my farmer friend’s calls became more insistent – he even got the green light from our local police wildlife officer. Yet still I chickened. Undoubtedly, this was a clear case of crop protection necessity, of helping ensure our food security; but there were too many footpaths and nearby houses. After the first 50 shots I was sure there would be a ‘well-meaning’ phone call to the rozzers and I wouldn’t be confronted by our local man but by the type who’ve rather relished their new powers.

We are, then, almost down to our last pigeon breasts and I’m contemplating digging out the air-rifle to deal silently with the rabbits in the paddocks. Others have thought similarly and there was a rush of airgun orders when the lockdown seemed imminent, one of which is being put to use somewhere within the M25. Having been furloughed, two muckers have reduced the plague of ring-necked parakeets by setting up a hide in the upstairs bathroom with much success. Though whether they eat them remains debatable. As we’ve all learnt, weird food isn’t always good for us.

Skinning away, I’d forgotten my child’s sleepover. ‘He’s killed Bambi!’ yelled a seven-year-old