H&C

"Over the summer I chaired and judged a couple of panels on the quality food awards, as I mentioned in one of my previous blogs. Last year the category of meat, poultry and game was won by a superb product from Highland Venison, which then went on to win the overall Golden Q award. 

This win by a UK venison product pleased me no end, especially since it was the first time game had been entered into the category, and I was glad that good quality Scottish venison had beaten some 30 other (very good) products and made a name for British venison, as opposed to the imported New Zealand Venison which certain supermarkets insist on carrying.

Back in the hot seat

This year, as I sat in the chairman’s seat again and cast my eye over the list of 35+ entered products, I was very happy to see three of the major supermarkets had entered venison products. Great, I thought, it's about time we saw more British Venison on our shelves.

I made the assumption that this was English, Scotch, Welsh or Irish Venison, because all the products that we looked at proudly carried the Union Jack or the Scottish, Welsh or Irish flag. But I was wrong - every one of the products came from New Zealand.

Questions to be answered

Why oh why are they buying in New Zealand Venison when we have an ample supply in the UK? I asked this question of the supermarkets and was given a whole bunch of reasons as to why: for example, “The UK can not supply the demand for the Venison we need.” Rubbish - we have a great supply of Venison in the UK and through good management of wild stocks as well as naturally farming on large areas of open land, we supply more than any supermarket will ever need.

“The quality of the Venison we get from New Zealand is superior to the UK venison.” Rubbish again - the Venison we have in the UK is a natural product of our countryside. The only time when Venison is hit and miss is when non-specialist suppliers deal with it and do not know how to select animals for certain products.

But remember that we are dealing with a wild animal that has had very little intervention in its selective breeding. Let's not try to turn it into the modern day economy chicken that has no flavour. These birds exist because this is what the supermarkets demand - a 1.5kg or 2kg bird full of useless muscle, that cannot fly and can barely support its own weight. Venison is not what they would call perfect and calculable in portions as lamb, but then wild animals never are.

Free-range living

Another argument was that “We have to be accountable to our customers that the venison we buy has had the best possible husbandry and has been humanly slaughtered.” All our venison is, and I would go as far as saying that an animal shot in the field has less stress then one taken to the slaughterhouse. Our wild venison lives free, goes where it wants to go, eating what it wants to eat, it is as free-range as you can get, has the best husbandry of all, because it is a wild animal that is harvested quickly and cleanly with no stress. Our naturally-farmed venison lives in large expanses of countryside and in many cases is shot in the field.

Ladies and gents of the supermarket world, you are buying venison from New Zealand because it's cheap and because you can cheaply ship it over in containers with frozen New Zealand lamb. Our venison is some of the best in the world and the chefs I teach know this. It comes from our countryside, is supplied fresh and travels a relatively short distance to your shops, not half way around the world. Let’s not ignore this fantastic British commodity and let's be as patriotic about venison as we are now about our pork, beef and Lamb - making it available to all.

“The CLA Game Fair this year was as fantastic as ever. Much of that is down to Nicky Barr and her army of staff that make the cookery demo tent run like clockwork. A special mention must go to Richard, Mary and Nicky’s mum who helped me and the other chefs  with many aspects of our demos and not forgetting Viv. Viv is one of the corner stones of the cookery demos making sure all the food is there, helping with prep and running about all over the place for us.

Popular demos

The demos were as popular as ever, and I had a brief chance to catch up with friends and fellow chefs Mike Robinson, Rachel Green and Michael Moore (who is an ex-student of the College) as well as Marie Taylor and Alan Claxon. All of us where kept busy by the sheer number of people watching the demos; I don’t think I counted an empty seat over the three days.

A new falcon

During the show, a friend of mine delivered my new young Peregrine falcon and she is a stunner. Training started in earnest during my time at the show by sitting with her quietly in the evenings. She is going special and a replacement to Isabella and Sophia, who died last winter after contracting a mystery air borne virus that killed 36 female Peregrines around the country in captivity but that now seems to have stopped with no more cases since March.

Lovely Bubbly Champagne

The Game Fair seems to be getting better and better each year and I look forward to the atmosphere and people I meet. Yet again this year, Mike and Fiona from Lovely Bubbly Champagne were on site with their Champagne Bar. Mike always does a spot with me matching Champagne to my food and believe me when I say that there is nothing they do not know about the fizzy stuff.

“Champagne is not just for special occasions. It is to be drunk at any time and the best thing is we invented it,” Mike tells the heaving crowd at one of my Alaskan seafood demos. “The French used to send to us here in the UK the lesser wines during the middle ages and, thinking they were being clever, added malaises and sugar to it to make it more palatable. This wine took up to a month to travel to the UK and during this time a second fermentation took place which caused the bubbles in the wine. The French thought they were sending us flat, second rate wine but it was only many years later that they discovered they were sending us a fizzy wine now known as Champagne.”

Mike and his wife Fiona import Champagne from the smaller producers in the Champagne region therefore supporting family run businesses who are focused on the quality of their limited product. During my demos for Bradley Smokers and Alaska Seafoods, Mike matched many Champagnes to my dishes, one of my favorites being Lancelot-Pienne Cuvée Rosé. This rose Champagne is limited to 5000 bottles 2500 of which Mike and Fiona stock. This Champagne sat well with my Wild Alaskan Salmon Tartar and before the Fair was over we shared a few glasses. Just the drink for the summer. Cheers!”    

“At work over the last six years I have been using a Bradley smoker to enhance and give a new dimension to the food we prepare. Home smoking was quite a difficult affair until we got one of these fantastic machines; up to that moment the likelihood of you setting fire to the smoker, the food you where smoking and yourself were quite high. But now the smoker controls how long the wood smolders for in a safe enclosed unit. With the Bradley, you just simply place the wood chips into the stacking system that then automatically feeds them through on to a hot plate where they smolder and produce the smoke, which, with the help of a heating element, flavours and cooks the food.

Hot and cold smoking

This is what we call hot smoking – that is, cooking food and flavouring it with smoke at the same time. Bradleys can also be used for cold smoking with the help of a cold smoke adaptor that fits on to the unit. Cold smoking is flavouring cured foods by placing them in a smoky environment with no heat so that they gain the smoky flavour but do not cook. An example of this is smoked salmon. Traditionally, food was smoked to extend its shelf life but nowadays we like the smoked flavor and have found ways of enhancing the food we eat by smoking it. Smoking can also add value to your food if you have a business or a bounty of food at set times of year, such as game or fish. To give you an example, a ready smoked chicken will cost around £7.99. I can smoke a chicken myself for £3.00. I have also smoked game, such as pheasants, in the same way I have smoked chicken and produced an exceptional starter during the season when game is plentiful.

Over the next few weeks I will be doing demos as Holkham and the CLA on smoking foods so I thought I would blog the recipes below for some of the foods I will be using. Happy smoking and see you at the shows - look out for Bradley Smokers at the CLA.  

Whole hot smoked chicken

1 whole chicken

2 lt cold water

200g curing salts

1)      Mix curing salts and water together  to create a brine.

2)      Place the brine into a small container so that when you submerge the chicken into it, it covers the bird.

3)      Leave the chicken in the brine overnight.

4)      Take the chicken out of the brine and drain any liquid out of the cavity.

5)      Truss the chicken (tie ready for cooking)

6)      Take a cloth and dry the skin well on the chicken, then place it on a cloth covered tray in the fridge again overnight. Do not cover it, because you want the skin to dry out so that the smoke will stick to it.

7)      Fill the stacking tube with wood chips. I have used hickory and oak for chicken.

8)      Fill a dousing bowl with water. Wood chips may fall into this when they have burnt out.

9)      Turn smoker on and set to high heat.

10)  Place the chicken on a smoking rack and into the smoker. If you are smoking more than one, make sure they are not touching so that the smoke can get all around them.

11)   Cook the chicken in the Bradley for between 45 to 60 minutes but check the juices are running clear and that the thickest part has a core temp of least at 65 to 70°C - use a temperature probe to do this.

12)  Once cooked, remove from the smoker, allow to cool then refrigerate. It can be used cold for salads, sandwich fillings or warmed up to be used in soups and pasta dishes amongst many other uses.

Hot smoked salmon

1 side of salmon

300g caster sugar

150g table salt  

Olive oil

1)      Make sure the salmon is free from bones.

2)      Trim the tail end off so that the side is the same thickness and width all the way through. Also make sure it fits on a rack nicely, allowing the smoke to freely pass around it. If necessary, with very large fish cut it in half.

3)      Place the salmon on to a tray.

4)      Mix the sugar and salt together well then sprinkle the mix over the top of the salmon. Use all the mix.

5)      Place in the fridge and leave overnight.

6)      The next morning, wash the sugar and salt mix off, then dry the salmon well using a cloth. If you have time, place in the fridge for a few hours to dry out further.

7)      Brush the skin side with some olive oil and place on the smoking rack.

8)      Fill the stacking tube with wood chips - I have used hickory, maple and oak for salmon.

9)      Three-quarters fill a dousing bowl with water. This is the bowl where the wood chips fall after they have burnt out.

10)  Turn the smoker on and set to high heat.

11)    Place the salmon in the smoker for 30 minutes. The salmon should be cooked but still moist in the middle. Its better slightly under-cooked as it will continue cooking once removed from smoker and allowed to cool.

12)   Once cooked, remove from smoker, allow to cool then refrigerate. It can be used cold for salads, sandwich fillings or warmed up to be used in soups and pasta dishes amongst many other uses.