Hare

Mick Healy of Wild Irish Game displaying furred and feathered game at Wild & Slow

Enjoying food that has been hunted rather than farmed is an experience that is less and less familiar and something which people are less and less comfortable with.

Our discomfort with game is as much a fear that it will be difficult to cook as it is that it might taste, well, a bit yucky.

And who can blame us? A food whose description often puts the words high, innards, green and - God forbid - maggots in the same sentence. This is mixed with a macho, male gunslinging posturing, augmented with toffee-nosed-brandy-and-cigar snobbery. The sport of redneck machismos and fatneck bankers, game hunting, in our modern world, has a bad image.

And another thing: killing game just has to mean a personal acceptance that something that was born to be free has had its life extinguished simply so you can have it for your table. There's no denying it, no wrapping it up in anonymous supermarket packaging. No escaping the fact that this was, very recently, a living, breathing beautiful wild animal.  That counts as a guilt trip in our post-Disney world of nature.

You've got this far and you're still interested? Well here's the other side of the story. Game is easy to cook, if you give a bit of thought to its structure. It's as pleasurable to eat as a piece of steak or chicken. If you're going to eat meat you need to be conscious of both its life and its death and game is very good for you. The hunter gatherer diet of our ancestors has never been matched in terms of nutrition.

There are also lots of good books giving simple recipes for game. Chefs cottoned on to its goodness long ago, and many have written about it.

John cooked our hare by adapting a recipe from Sean Hill, who noted that one should stay clear of hanging the animals for an excessive time, and be wary of using the organs as these can give flavours that peoople find too intense.

He then made the leftovers into a hare pie,with a buttermilk pastry. Here are the recipes:

Roast Saddle and Braised Leg of Hare

Serves 4
1 young hare
sunflower oil, for frying
500ml chicken stock
1 tablespoon plain flour
a little grated nutmeg
1 onion, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
150ml red wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Joint the hare. First remove the back legs by cutting them away with a sharp knife, then divide the legs down the centre. Similarly, remove the front shoulders and divide. You now have two legs, two shoulders and a saddle.

Dust the hare legs with flour and season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Brown them in a hot frying pan, then transfer to a heavy lidded pot or casserole. Do the same with the shoulders.

Heat the oven to 180ºC. Fry the onion, celery and carrot and put these in the pot with the hare legs and shoulders. Pour on the chicken stock and red wine, then cover and cook in the oven for two hours or until the meat is completely tender.

Raise the oven temperature to 220ºC. Brush the saddle with oil season with salt and pepper and roast for 15 minutes. The meat cooks quickly and should be rare. Take the saddle out, cover and let it rest.

Strain the cooking stock from the casserole into a saucepan and bring it to the boil, skimming the surface.

Carve the fillets from the saddle, slice them handsomely and lay alongside the braised legs and shoulders. Serve with the sauce.

Hare Pie with Buttermilk Pastry

227g butter
227g plain flour
4 tablespoons buttermilk

1 egg, beaten

Crumble the butter into the flour to make a breadcrumb consistency, then add the buttermilk. Bring the mixture together and chill for an hour in the fridge before rolling out.

Take what hare remains from your braised and roasted animal and cut into bite-sized pieces. Sauté some leeks and carrots – you can also add mushrooms – until tender, then mix with the hare and some of the leftover gravy, so you have a nice, moist filling. Add lots of chopped parsley.
Lay the hare and vegetable mixture in your dish. Plonk your singing blackbird in the centre to let the steam escape. Roll out the buttermilk pastry. Line the edge of the dish with a strip of pastry, sealed on both sides with a beaten egg, and place the remaining rolled out pastry on top. Brush again with some beaten egg. Cook for approximately 30 minutes in a 180ºC oven.

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