Talking turkey – or not

There’ll be no anaemic supermarket bird gracing Neil and Serena Cross’s table this Christmas Day, their thoughts turning to wild game – but why stop at one?

NDC

As Christmas approaches and the hooks on the beam outside our door are filled with an endless procession of feathered game, it often strikes me that we’ve sold the festive turkey a little short. In its native land, the gobbler is the king of gamebirds, attracting near-evangelical pursuit and spawning not only immense competition in the harvesting but also in the calling. When I found myself in the backwoods of Alabama, turkey-fever was rife and there was not a twizzler in sight. They are stalked and then called with a crazy variety of commercial and home-made devices. The best callers win both prizes and prestige, as well as feeding their families on some of the most delicious wild game meat imaginable.

A wild turkey is a far cry from the slightly insipid, watery bird that floods our supermarkets at this time of year. With the cock bird, or Tom, weighing in at more than 25lb and sporting both extraordinary wattles and a 1970s chest-beard, he makes both a massive roast and an impressive trophy.

Although unrelated, our European capercaillie are similarly stunning with their fan-tails and scarlet ‘roses’ above the eyes. Previously extirpated in Scotland, the reintroduced population has fallen dramatically since the 1960s and is no longer shot. However, across Scandinavia, the birds are still numerous and eagerly pursued. Imagine, then, my excitement when my Norwegian friend, Hans, recently asked us capercaillie hunting in the forests of northern Norway where his family have owned the woods and chased the capers for generations. This promises to be a trip to remember, so watch this space…

In the meantime, with a snowstorm of various feathers blowing around our kitchen, it is time to celebrate the wonderful diversity of game we are lucky enough to have available to us and to be creative with it. We may not be able to sally forth for a two-stone gobbler, but it’s perfectly possible to gain two stone this month by tucking into what we shoot and washing it down with the sort of wines it deserves.

This Christmas should be a cracker after last year’s damp squib and many of us will be out as much as daylight allows to fill the larder, enjoy the banter and treasure our countryside. I shall be bouncing around the West Country, catching up with friends and looking forward to a truly wild feast on Christmas Day.

SFC

This year, I promised my husband I would cook something quite different for Christmas lunch and so over the past couple of months I have been painstakingly foraging and collecting the ingredients for our multi-bird Christmas roast. I have since discovered that walking miles through bogs, gun in hand, is less of an ordeal than running the gauntlet of Waitrose at Yuletide. What I perhaps haven’t bargained for is the micro-surgery that’ll be needed to bone out my birds and then fit them back together, Russian-doll style, without creating Frankensnipe.

As this is the time of year when excess and overindulgence are at large, I will make no apologies for creating a lavish layer-cake of wild game and ’fowl, fit for the après-hunt table of Jorrocks. I’m planning to shoot every component of the roast myself and, with the construction and the cooking sealing enormous satisfaction into the deal, Christmas lunch won’t ever have been more rewarding. I fear that amidst much huffing and puffing and stuffing, quite a lot of the Calvados intended for said stuffing will evaporate before it makes its tipsy way into the mixture. I suspect I’ll leave the kitchen with only an empty bottle and a disappointed labrador for company, exhausted but really rather proud of my creation.

The birds chosen to grace this dish are all being sourced locally (including a most unfortunate spinster goose) to be worked beautifully together, both in terms of size and layering of different coloured meat. The final cut will involve a snipe inside a woodcock, inside a wild duck, inside a goose, with a generous layer of boozy stuffing between each strata.

Known by various names over the centuries, the multi-bird roast was the height of fashion amongst Tudor landowners who used it to show off gastronomically the variety of game on their estates. In 18thcentury France, where hedonism knew no bounds, the palace chefs regularly stuffed 17 birds into each other. Queen Victoria also popularised the four-bird roast, which enjoyed a resurgence during the 19th century when game became readily available in the towns and cities.

Once I hunt, gather, pluck, dress, bone, stuff and booze this confection into shape, I’m planning a round-the-clock guard to protect it from predation in the kitchen. On the day, all the husband will have to do is admire it, carve it and decant his best claret for it. We will raise a glass of that to you all and wish you a very merry Christmas.