Take a wok on the wild side

Noodle. It’s a funny old word. Not only a food item, but bizarrely slang for both a brain and a stupid person. “Use your noodle” can clearly be interpreted many ways. But this humble dehydrated wheat or rice food staple shouldn’t be underestimated. The Chinese went into battle with it, warlord outclassing warlord in the 4th century BC on calorific consumption alone. Who needed meat when you had a supply of noodles? Just add water and you’re good to go at ‘em. It gets terrible press, but anyone who’s ever succumbed to a Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle after a big night out will know the feeling.

China lays claim to having invented the noodle and this probably isn’t a far-fetched assertion. Whilst digging the path of an extension to Xi’an airport, a tomb was uncovered, possibly that of a junior-ranking soldier. He had been buried, as was practice at the time, with all the worldly possessions he wished to take with him to the afterlife. Including a bowl of noodles. Not just any old noodles but sealed in a posh brass pot. Archaeologists dated the pot to some 2,400 years ago and said the soup, which also contained several bones, was still liquid but had turned green due to the oxidisation of the bronze. It is only due to the tomb having been so tightly sealed that the liquid did not evaporate.

But hold your terracotta horses. The oldest noodles on record actually date back even further. At a whopping 4,000 years old (well past their sell by date) a small parcel of noodles, trapped by an upended urn, were uncovered in silt close to the Yellow River in North East China. Easily identifiable as being made from millet grain, this fossilised nest put China firmly on the map as the birthplace of noodles.

Marco Polo supposedly introduced noodles from China to a grateful Italy early in the 13th century, but it wasn’t until Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Tuscany from Peru in 1548 with an ornamental plant named a lycoperiscon or a tomatl that things became interesting. Considered highly poisonous, it was almost certainly sheer hunger rather than curiosity which resulted in Neapolitans desperately stripping the supposedly toxic red balls off their houseplants and cooking them up to accompany a bowl of Polo’s foreign finest.

Demand for a quick and convenient mealtime solution – from the ramen cooked by street vendors and served to workers in Japan, to the gluten-free, organic spaghetti demanded by the yummy mummies of Kensington – has made the noodle a worldwide essential.

So what’s a game food writer doing banging on about noodles? It’s been at the back of my mind for a while, but a valid topic came up at a (jolly good) lunch with fellow Guns commiserating our mutual lack of invites up north on the Twelfth in St James’ the other day. What’s going to happen to the UK game meat export market after Brexit? Plugging ‘UK game meat exports’ into Google led me to the ‘Part B – Minor Meats 2014’ Report commissioned by the European Commission from the catchily-named Stichting Dienst Landbouwkundig Onderzoek Research Institute LEI. At least we now know where our money ends up, even if we can’t pronounce who it goes to, let alone dare to hazard a guess at how much the damn thing cost to produce.

I ploughed through 53 pages of data and, aside from gleaning the vital stat that in 2013 the UK imported 87 tonnes of reindeer meat, juicy facts regarding our game industry exports were hard to find. One biggie though: the majority of pheasant consumed in France is exported from Britain. I can confirm this as truth. An old schoolfriend of Mr M-W’s owns a rather nice shoot which encompasses a mere triplet of England’s counties. His spare phezzies have historically all been purchased, 25p a brace, by a game dealer who exports the lot across the Channel to ironically end up as ‘French Country Pâté’. This season he’s even looking at having to pay the game dealer to take them away! So what’s going to happen in the future to all those phezzies we are currently exporting to France? Cue November 2019 Daily Mail sensationalist article with pictures of piles of rotting pheasants next to ruddy-faced, red-trousered, unscrupulous shoot owners and their ‘multi-million pound country mansions’.

Spain consumes all of its wild boar and partridge production, yet still imports more. France imports over 600 tonnes of game meat annually (much of it from the UK), so why can’t we up our own consumption? France has over 1.3 million hunters who, along with their immediate families, eat around 30kg per hunter per year. That’s over half a kilo per person per week. The average Brit will consume very little game, but will nibble their way through over 8g of takeaway kebab meat this week and over 16g of burgers. Horsemeat scandals notwithstanding, this is a remarkable 36 per cent drop since 2001 and there is clearly a trend in the UK towards shunning red meat, particularly of the processed variety.

So how can we start to tempt our fellow Brits into eating more of our own, locally-sourced and ethically-hunted game – particularly phezzies – when Brexit happens? Personally, I believe it’s time to dig that gap-year wok out from the cupboard under the stairs and get more creative with British produce.

A clear advantage to dicing up game to use in a stir-fry is that it’s easier to pick out any stray shot. If game dealers aren’t prepared to pay for shot birds any more, then is there an opportunity for British supermarket chains to start cashing in on the potential of being given, what is essentially, free meat? Birds in the feather as a product generally scare the UK populace; some lily-livered folk are even squeamish about plucked whole gamebirds, preferring to acquire cheap, flaccid, reared on fish meal, chicken breasts. Carve those unwanted pheasant breasts up into lead-free slices, bung them on a polystyrene tray and wrap ‘em in cling film. Stick a Union Jack on the label (refer to final pages of Part B – Minor Meats above), state when and where the bird was shot and you’ve got healthy, saleable little strips of tastiness. You’ll also use far less meat per person in a stir-fry than any classic meat ‘n’ two veg scenario, so even if you haven’t caught it yourself, you won’t need to pull the kids out of private school to acquire enough game for a dinner party wok-fest. And with a hefty Brexit bill approaching, we’ll need to keep a closer eye on our chequebooks and the number of holes in our cartridge belts.

By sticking with British produce, we support our economy – not only in the game industry, but across the board – that’s everyone from the farmer, to those who work in food processing and the retailers selling the food. British food travels less distance from field to market, resulting in a significantly lower carbon footprint than almost all imported food. Plus, let’s not forget that eating British fruits and vegetables when in season is good for us as they contain the specific nutrients our bodies need at particular times of the year. Talking of vital nutrients, where is the factory which makes the entire global production of Pot Noodles located? Crumlin, South Wales. And yes, Pot Noodles are exported to China.

RECIPE: Spicy partridge noodles

Serves 2

The recipe below works just as well with venison, hare, rabbit or any gamebird. It can also be made spicier and multi-dimensional with the addition of Szechuan pepper. Heads up that it works really well for a casual shoot lunch, too, as it looks bright and inviting and can be cooked at the last minute, the British veg retaining that all-important crunch.

Ingredients
•    2 tbsp rice wine
•    100ml soy sauce
•    2 tbsp sesame oil
•    2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
•    One mild red chilli, finely diced
•    ½ tsp ground white pepper
•    Pinch rock salt
•    6 partridge breasts (or 4 young pheasant breasts)
•    About 2cm length of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
•    2 bags medium size ‘straight to wok’ wheat or nice noodles
•    2 handfuls of seasonal diced British green veg (runner beans, peas, chard, courgettes, etc)
•    ½ head of Savoy cabbage, thinly sliced, woody stem removed
•    Roughly chopped handful coriander
•    3 sliced spring onions
•    (Optional) Additional sesame oil and sliced red chilli to decorate

Method
Mix together the rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli sauce, diced chilli, white pepper, rock salt and partridge breasts in a bowl. Leave to marinade in the fridge for a 1–2 hours.

Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok (or fairly deep non-stick pan) over a medium heat. When it starts to smoke gently, add the white part of the spring onions and the ginger then stir fry for a minute or two, tossing all the time so as not to burn.

Take the partridge breasts out of the marinade and pour the remaining marinade liquid into the wok. Stir fry for a further 2 minutes.

Add a small amount of vegetable oil to a griddle pan and heat until it begins to smoke. Add the partridge breasts and cook for 1–2 minutes on each side (depending on size of partridge). Remove from pan and cover with foil.

Add the noodles, British vegetables and cabbage to the wok, tossing them into the sauce for 5 minutes.

Divide the noodle and vegetable mixture between 6 bowls. Slice the partridge (or pheasant) breasts and arrange 3 or 4 pieces per person on top of the noodles, along with the green part of the chopped spring onions and shredded coriander.

Drizzle with a very small amount of sesame oil and top with additional slices of mild red chilli for extra colour and flavour.

See here for other game recipes to try out.