Summer Dijon partridge and peas recipe

This is getting confusing. My response was to @Stella 's comment. But while gamekeepers in the UK might occasionally be dealers I don’t think that is often the case. I have lived in several rural communities throughout the UK and known many gamekeepers (and riverkeepers), both full and part-time and none of them would have had the time nor resources to be game dealers. In the main these are specialist butchers who deal directly with the gamekeepers for their supplies and, of course, still have to be licensed, due to archaic laws to discourage poaching (I’ve know a few poachers as well).

confusion reigns supreme :wink:

chicken or pintade suprême?

I consider our local Chasse as “game keepers” looking after the animals/birds and their natural habitat… although the Chasse does not rear birds etc to provide “sport” (which I think is sometimes done by game-keepers in UK)

1 Like

Quite the reverse Stella… in many instances, the Chasse control the over-population of animals in the countryside so no need to artificially increase their numbers just for the “sport”…

1 Like

Caught this topic a bit late but nice to see people not only keen to eat game but openly talk about it aswell,the dictionary is full of crude and ugly words but call a spade a spade n all that,although I do like the americanism “harvesting the resources” shocked at the quoted price for partridge if I have to pay they are a pound a brace at the end of the day for the beaters on our local shoot roll on September 1st,looks like I may have to go veggie when we retire to France :grimacing:

1 Like

Several years ago, before I had my PdC, I used a company in Normandy and another at Rungis who would supply Perdrix, royale and rouge, and many other choice meats. Fresh and frozen were available year round. A quick web search will bring up company details.

lost me!

Permis de Chasse

ah! makes sense now :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks

Re your PDC was it a difficult process?I’m nowhere near retiring to France yet but I would like to carry on with my lifelong pursuit maybe even get chance to fish a bit more

@ratman As I already had gone through the process of obtaining a PdT (target) and a carte CdA (collection) it was very easy. The theoretical part is basically a case of remembering which birds and beasts are fair game and in which season. As with everything in France a medical cert is required and the exam is based on getting a minimum 25 correct answers from the 31 questions posed from a quite large pot. This may help:

Sounds pretty straightforward so should be hope for me going forward its a pity we don’t have similar here as it would weed out the cowboys and thus the bad press from time to time and possibly give access to ground to those unfortunate not to have any

Thanks for the link I’m sure it’ll prove very helpful

Agree with many of your points, but I suggested mallard specifically rather than duck in general because it has very little fat. Also frozen peas are usually acceptable.

Back in the old country we used to buy whole pheasants for 50p from the shoots and wild rabbits were £1 from the butcher. Similar prices but very different economic backgrounds -twenty years ago our local shoots (Cumbrian Pennines) were around £1,000 a day for a pair of guns, whereas when we moved to the Cumbrian coast, the local butcher’s wild rabbits were shot by unemployed locals! Upon reflection, this contrast doesn’t merely demonstrate a disparity between two economic systems, but an ecological one two as the shoots encouraged a monoculture, whereas the wild rabbits lived in the fields around the Solway Firth.

By contrast, nowadays I don’t eat rabbit in France for the same reason I don’t eat battery farmed chicken.

Lastly, I can’t believe people just buy partridge breast fillets (tho’ obviously they do - in London?) Buy the whole bird! With most small game birds, the breast is very tender, but the legs are not, so it’s worth taking the breasts off the carcass, and cooking the latter in wine and aromatics for an hour or so before putting the breasts (suitably lubricated with butter or whatever) in a hot oven for just a few minutes. Meanwhile reduce the liquor from legs and carcass and serve legs with breasts in a sauce made from the carcass stock.

1 Like

I have a wonderful old cookery book ‘Classic Game Cookery’ complied by the Game Conservancy by Julia Drysdale, nothing very difficult in it, apart from getting the game here in the Clunysois, and another ‘Poultry & Game’ by Ian McAndrew, more cheffy.

1 Like