Jack Spratt's Pigeon Salad

One of the current food issues which excites a lot of debate is lean meat versus fatty meat.  People watching their weight and cholesterol levels will choose the former and those who prize taste and succulence above all will tend to choose the latter.  For it is often fat that has more flavour than flesh and it is the fat in a marbled piece of beef for instance that will provide juiciness.  

However, there is a third type of meat which is lean AND tasty, AND succulent if cooked correctly, and that meat is game.  We don't eat enough game in this country and yet game is plentiful, if often seasonal, and usually cheap.  

Wood Pigeons are one of England's most common game birds.  The breasts are often sold separately, like chickens', the rest of the bird being quite bony but handy for making stock.  Because they are lean the breasts should be served pink to retain moisture: cooked well done they are dry and tough.  They have a moderately strong, sometimes slightly livery taste, and I love them. It takes about 2 minutes, if that, to cook them in a hot frying pan. Do them in the oven and it's all too easy to overcook.
This warm pigeon salad took about five minutes to prepare.  For wine, a slightly rustic Pinot Noir would go well, nothing too fancy.  And you can have an extra glass smug in the knowledge that you've barely consumed any saturated fat.  Even Jack Spratt's wife might have been impressed.

the pigeon breasts were bought at the Friday Street Farm Shop and came from The Wild Meat Company (recommended by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall), the Merlot vinegar was bought at Emmett's (a Rick Stein Food Hero), and the salad leaves were bought at the Aldeburgh Market Shop, all excellent sources of delicious, mainly local food

Foie Gras for Impecunious Piscivores

When you buy, or catch, a herring you get a lot more than just a couple of fillets.

You get a load of roe (from the female) and millet (from the male).

Both are excellent to eat.  The roe's firm and grainy, the milt really soft and creamy.

Spot the sperm.

The best way to cook these is to dust them in seasoned flour and fry them for 5 minutes being careful not to let them catch and then squeezing some lemon onto them and finally adding a sprinkling of chopped flatleaf parsley.  Serve them on buttered sourdough toast.

The roe has slightly more flavour though is not remotely fishy.  The milt (above) is reminiscent of fresh foie gras straight out of the frying pan (foie gras poêlé) but without the guilt feeling.  Actually, it has less taste than foie gras but the same molten, slippery unctuosity; perhaps it's more like calf's brains.

Talking of guilt, perhaps one should worry about eating thousands of eggs and thousands of sperms.  But, at least these little fish lived in the wild off the coast at Aldeburgh until they were caught.  And Hugh Fearnley-
Whittingstall eats them so it must be ok.

One thing though; out of 6 randomly chosen fish, 5 were blokes.  It must be quite competitive out there in the North Sea.