Game - inspired by a white van
"game has such a close relationship with nature that it manages to surprise and delight on some level every time you cook and eat it."
Tom Norrington Davies
The above are just four firms I have found that supply game meats and birds to the public and to restaurants here in Australia. There are actually lots more. And when we visited New Zealand a few years ago I remember thinking there were more deer being farmed than sheep and every restaurant had venison on the menu.
Why am I talking about this? Well I saw a white van with Gamekeepers Meats written on the side (the first one in the above selection). I found this somehow intriguing, snobby, nostalgic and somewhat olde worlde. So I looked tham up and found that it was owned by a chef and his wife, who through a series of life changes, now supply high quality meat and game to restaurants. Not for the likes of you and me. They, like some of the other companies shown above, probably deserve a post all of their own as most of them at least began as small family businesses. Some still are. But in the end I decided I would just ponder on hunting, on game as food and on gamekeepers.
Hunting and sport seem to me to be completely opposite in meaning but they are, of course, often used together. Hunting, shooting and fishing is a 'sport, although most of us get all hung up about the barbarity of shooting animals for fun - even rabbits. Though not about fishing - which seems to be a male bonding kind of thing. Farmers, of course, do it to protect their crops and their animals, and I guess there are also a lot of hunting, shooting and fishing types here. Probably not as many as in America though. And in Britain it seems to still be the reserve of the wealthy.
Obviously man has been hunting since prehistoric times. Our lives depended on it - as it does in some wild (and not so wild) corners of the world even today. But then we domesticated animals and the wild ones became reserved for the rich and aristocratic. I think even today in England you can't hunt swans or deer without the queen's permission - though that may be an urban myth. I know I grew up thinking that all the deer and all the swans belonged to the queen. Deer are now a pest to some people - my sister who lives on a residential estate just outside a small town in Sussex, is often bothered by deer eating her plants. Much like our possums and kangaroos. By the way, why don't we eat possums? Do they taste horrible? They're not endangered after all.
When I was at university I had a boyfriend who came from Skipton in Yorkshire - I think on the edge of the moors. He told me that in the holidays and growing up he had worked beating the grouse and the pheasants out of the undergrowth for the rich hunters - the local lord of the manor probably. And it still happens. Nevertheless there is something romantic about 'the hunt', although it is hard to explain why seeing as how it is the domain of the truly rich and is also basically barbaric. Okay I suppose if you are hunting foxes = beautiful creatures though they are - nobody seems to like them. But 'the hunt' often takes place in staggeringly beautiful places and there is so much tradition, and custom attached to it. There is a manufactured romance about it all.
But then is eating farmed meat any better?
"Next time you find yourself worrying about the way your pork chop was treated on the farm, consider the genuinely free-range lifestyle of a rabbit, or a deer, or any number of other critters that roam where they like and eat what they want." Tom Norrington Davies
So should we all be eating wild game instead? Well no - basically I don't think we can eat wild game here in Australia - unless you are a farmer or a country hunter, or somehow registered to be able to do so. I don't think they are allowed to sell wild rabbits in the shops because of the fear of them being infected. We have been poisoning them for decades after all. Then there's the gunshot that you might find in what you are eating. No most of our game - what there is - is actually farmed. And they may be farmed in equally unpleasant ways as the worst factory farmed chickens. I remember seeing a largeish cage of baby pheasants in the Dordogne once. Not sure what was going to happen to them when they grew.
And what is game anyway? Well it obviously varies from country to country. Australia and other colonial countries of course, have animals that were imported specifically for hunting - witness the rabbits. Deer are not native, but deer are one of the major farmed animals. We do have wild water buffalo and buffalo and feral pigs - which I guess they may well hunt and sell. Though I think that at last they are realising the value of the buffalo and gathering them together into herds - for their milk and their meat. There is kangaroo of course - now available in your local supermarket. And then there is duck - also available in your supermarket. Goose not so much, turkey is more seasonal. Pheasant, partridge, guinea fowl, maybe grouse, though I think not, are available from specialist suppliers. Ditto for crocodiles and emu. Quail are relatively common, though not in the supermarket, and their eggs are becoming increasingly available. Hare? Maybe.
So is there a difference between wild and farmed game? According to chef Adrian Richardson, yes there is. Of course. The elite of the foodie world would say that wouldn't they?
"Wild game is distinguishable from farmed game in two simple ways: by its flavour and by the leanness of its meat. When it comes to diet, wild game – be it furry or feathered – has a much more varied foraged diet, of wild grasses, berries, grubs and grains, than its farmed cousins. The flavour of the meat reflects this variety and is the reason why wild game has a deep, more intensely ‘gamey’ flavour." Adrian Richardson
He goes on to extol the virtues of hanging the meat to enhance the gamey flavour - so much so that in some cases the meat is almost going off. It tenderises it apparently. I also remember marinading meat for days to give it a 'gamey flavour when I was young. Do we really want food to taste like this?
“it tastes gamey” is enough to make most folks steer clear of any dish beyond their beloved beef, pork, or chicken The Art of Manliness
Well maybe a little bit. I do love rabbit. I like duck, turkey (does that count as game?) and goose. I quite like venison and kangaroo, but they are a bit rich. I have tasted pheasant, pigeon, partridge and guinea fowl but to be honest I can't quite remember whether I liked them or not. A bit like duck I think. The pigeon had a lot of bones. The pheasant was pretty good I think. One of my husband's aunts once presented us with a pheasant. I have no idea what I did with it, but I probably turned to Robert Carrier and Elizabeth David for inspiration. All in all game does not turn up a lot on restaurant menus here with the exception of duck and kangaroo. Not like in France. Duck is just everywhere and also guinea fowl and partridge. And rabbit and wild boar too. And of course throughout continental Europe everyone goes hunting - not just the rich. It's a 'man's got to do what a man's got to do kind of thing.' And the poor wives have to cook whatever they bring home.
In England I think it's still the preserve of the rich. Who still have gamekeepers. I looked for paintings of gamekeepers and chose this one.
But there were lots of them. Almost all with at least one faithful dog, more likely two. There's something romantic about a gamekeeper is there not - I mean Lady Chatterley and all that. Romantic in the rough and ready strong and silent type that is. What do they do? Well according to Wikipedia:
"Typically, a gamekeeper is employed by a landowner, and often in the United Kingdom by a country estate, to prevent poaching, to rear and release game birds such as common pheasants and French partridge, eradicate pests, encourage and manage wild red grouse, and to control predators such as weasels, to manage habitats to suit game, and to monitor the health of the game."
So really they are sort of conservators - other than the fact that they are conserving the animals so that they can be shot for sport. Still I sort of see the argument. Hunting - keeps down the pests - like rabbits - conserves species so that there are lots of them to kill, and provides tasty food at the end of it, as well as entertainment for the rich.
They don't eat the foxes either do they? Why not?
