Farmers Market

The pheasant and partridge shooting season finishes on February 1st, which means that this is the last chance to buy either of these birds at The Gourmet Game Company’s stall in the Farmers Market, which fills the precinct this Saturday. With this in mind, I ring Neale Hopper, the director of the company, on his mobile. Why would we want to eat either of these birds? “Well, the price, for one thing,” he says. “I’m not sure how much an organic chicken costs - let’s say £10 or £12. Well a brace of pheasants, which are oven-ready and will feed about four people, costs a fiver.” And the taste? “The taste is rather like chicken, only more flavoursome. The meat is leaner, and there is less fat, for obvious reasons. Some people have the idea that the taste is very gamey. Well it might have been in Victorian times because they tended to hang it longer, but we only hang ours for a week. And it’s very versatile, too. You can do with pheasant exactly what you can do with chicken. Curry it, tandoori it, roast it, whatever you want. Partridge, too. The only downside might be the odd bit of lead shot.”

Talking of which, seeing as we’re speaking on the last Monday of the season, shouldn’t Mr. Hopper be out there in the fields shooting at birds instead of talking in his office with journalists? “Where do you think I am, then?” he replies. “I’m actually standing in a field as we speak, ready for a shoot.” AG