Tufted duck, Aythya fuligula, is a diving duck. Due to grazing on marshes and closer to the sea shore its meat has a dark red colour and has a stronger gamier taste than the rest of the wild duck species.

Davids recommendation was to boil the duck and then blend it into a pate. My thoughts turned to the chicken liver parfait recipe that we current make at the restaurant. So the inspiration for this recipe came from that. After a good look and prod and feel I realised there is not much to these tufted ducks, however the breast meat can be bulked out with items such as chicken livers, which in tow will mellow the overwhelming strong game flavour and make it more palatable.

I served this rich and flavoursome parfait with quinces poached in red wine and Professor Baker’s pickled walnuts, aka “wombats”. The textures and flavours works a treat. Do remember to serve small amounts of this parfait as it’s incredibly rich and provide plenty of toasted sourdough.

These events give us the opportunity to prepare and create mouth watering dishes. The recipe opportunities are endless. Now that the game season has begun with autumn in full swing it’s time to bring back our show stopping game dishes.

This venison carpaccio is a twist on a classic beef carpaccio with the addition of a crispy venison shoulder lollipop and a delicious shallot and hazelnut vinaigrette.

I like cooking with game, the meat is lean hence being healthier, and for me personally it’s all about the fact that it is very seasonal. Another great friend of ours, David Grimwood has been incredibly kind by bringing us various bits of game and educated us about the amazing world of the wild ducks. This pan-roasted teal and pearl barley salad with damson vinaigrette is just one of many fantastic recipes we created with David’s gifts of wild ducks.



Have a look at these mouthwatering game recipes for further inspiration on cooking with game:

• A Tasting of Game
• Partridge, Fig and Salted Caramel Walnuts
• Venison Haunch Steak with Spelt Grain and Red Wine Sauce
• Venison and Smoked Pnachetta Meatballs

We hand on heart support the Farm Animal Welfare Week. It’s important that we offer high welfare food items on our menus and tell everyone that we genuinely do what we say we do, and to highlight this, we have joined the Simply Ask Campaign.

The Freedom Food Food Simply Ask campaign is a unique UK assurance scheme run by the RSPCA; not only are all standards mandatory, the standards also cover every stage of the animal’s life from birth until slaughter in a dedication to improving animal welfare. Meat products, dairy and eggs are sourced ethically and locally at the British Larder Suffolk, reinforcing its commitment to animal welfare.

Once we started asking our suppliers about their credentials and “digging” a bit deeper into the rearing and welfare standards they follow we discovered that nearly all of them were either organic or freedom foods approved. I’m not entirely sure why I was a bit surprised, it was a good surprise after all. We realised we are “shopping” at the right places and buy from the right people. We urge chefs and restauranteurs to join the scheme. It’s good for business and if you already fit the criteria why not join the scheme, sign up and get the seal of approval.

Staff food at the British Larder does not consist of dishes from the menu but it’s cooked fresh every day using trimmings and leftovers. It’s also a great opportunity for the all the chefs to experiment, think outside the proverbial box and be creative. Most day’s it’s a bit of a “ready-steady-cook” affair as we might end up with a bit of pig trim, a couple of potatoes and a few hen’s eggs. This Pig Hash is one of Steve’s creations which started off as a staff meal recipe and turned into a “real”dish that we cooked as a lunch special on the menu. It’s a great brunch/ breakfast dish.

Pork is one of the best sellers on our menus. As we are approaching the one year anniversary mark we were talking last week about the amount of pig we have used so far here at the British Larder. Well we are none the wiser as we have no idea…unless I do some serious research…nevertheless we guess that each staff member must have eaten the value of a whole Dingley Dell pig by now! No… that can’t be right, surely…. now that is a scary thought!

Moving to Suffolk always was and still is about the quality of ingredients on offer. We made it our business to move into a region unknown to us and to adapt, absorb and work with the local area. It’s not always been an easy ride however after 10 months we can safely say we still feel the same drive as when we first moved here. We have met some fantastic people along the way and Mark Hayward from Dingley Dell has taken us “under his wing” and supported and helped us along the way. He has also in an indirect way helped us firmly confirm our ethos and what the British Larder stands for.

Dingley Dell farm is no more 2.5 miles from us and and having this high quality ingredient so close provides that all important reassurance we require to ensure that we have made the right choice. We are continuously working with Mark either on new recipes or new concepts. Dingley Dell is a Freedoms Food approved farm and has consequently introduced us to the wonderful world of Freedom Foods. We are proud to say that we take part in the Freedoms Foods Simply Ask campaign and tick six boxes in the freedom food categories of high animal welfare! That is stupendously impressive. We are working hard to tick the final three.

I have a conscience and certainly do not want it to be a guilty one!

Well it all just simply makes sense. I would not serve yet alone work with ingredients where I know an animal might have suffered. Why should my customers have to eat it? I make it my business to know where our food comes from and I know that our customers trust that we take animal welfare and indeed customer welfare to heart. We are also serious about food miles; the closer and more local the better for us.

It’s not always easy as these ingredients sometimes cost more due to not being mass bread, as they are usually from small independent businesses. Ross and I made a promise to support small local producers, farmers and suppliers as we believe that our penny and pound spend  in the county we live in will boost the local economy and those farmers, producers and suppliers can become stronger, develop and consequently deliver better quality and standards for our customers to enjoy. It’s all one vicious circle and it’s hard to stay inside and do the hamster run with it, but most importantly we must not fall out, keep working at it and persevere. So no foie grass for us then!

These magical scotch eggs are perhaps the single most popular dish here at the British Larder. We have a scotch egg for every season. During the game season the Dingley dell smoked ham are substituted for either venison or pheasant scotch egg.

Our secret to the perfect scotch egg is simple:

1. Use free range organic eggs, large preferably

2. Cook the eggs for 7 minutes and dunk them immediately in ice water after 7 minutes

3. Make sure the sausage meat mixture on the outside is tasty, well seasoned and contains the best ingredients you can find.

Simple! The magical scotch egg…done!

The lack of rain has, however, made things difficult for farmers in the county. We are all hoping for some decent downpours - hopefully it will help the season to end with a decent bang.

Sutton Hoo chickens are the best chickens you can buy, and boy are they tasty chickens!

At the Easter Snape Maltings Farmer’s market I was invited by Belinda Nash from Sutton Hoo chickens to do a cookery demonstration using her chickens. I was glad she asked me; it helped me to create a few new recipes, and it’s always lovely to cook with ingredients you enjoy working with and thoroughly believe in too.

This recipe is using some fantastic new season ingredients such as new season potatoes, small but super sweet and fresh asparagus, and oregano from my garden… well, technically the oregano is from Lin’s allotment, however she gave me a large chunk of her plant that was slightly overgrown, so we then transferred it to my kitchen garden. Long story but that is how it goes! It’s great cooking with locals – I can’t wait for the summer to kick in properly so that we can receive more tasty treats from Lin’s fantastic allotment!

This recipe is easy to prepare and super quick too - if you are organised. You can even prepare the chicken a day in advance, let it rest in the fridge raw, and cook it the following day when needed.

To put it all into perspective I thought that our move to Suffolk would be slightly harder than it actually has been. I’m talking about the integration with the local community and getting used to a slightly different way of life. Let’s face it - we are each working almost 100 hours per week and having to deal with all sorts of issues we frankly never ever needed to deal with in the past. But it’s like a marriage and we decided to take the leap into the unknown and pledge our vows for better or for worse, for richer or poorer and in sickness and in health…. and we are still here!  Happily united with the British Larder Suffolk.

At first we did not get any days off or any time away, and it’s been slightly depressing. Summer went, Autumn came and passed and then finally Winter set in. So did the game season arrive and interestingly, we felt alive as we lived in a county where our customers embraced all the seasons and enjoyed all the flavours of game we could possibly come up with.

We also made friends… and yes they are dear friends too. We met David Grimwood and Louise from the Froize Inn. David has taken us under his wing, and like a father took us by our hands and led us through our settling in period here in Suffolk. David and Louise have also been spoiling us - not only do they visit regularly but they come bearing gifts! They brought this wonderful basket filled with the best of the season’s Woodcock, along with a beautiful book and Artist’s impression of woodcock. It’s a beautiful and tasty seasonal gift, and one we appreciated a lot.

As I’m talking about our new found appreciation for game and the splendour of the short but wonderful season I should also talk about the rest of the people who helped us along the way.  There is Karen and Neil, two game farmers – Neil brings us plenty of birds in feather and they both took us along on a shoot where we were introduced to the wonderful world of beating. With the great understanding of how it all works Ross and I think we could easily settle into our new found lifestyle.

Then there is Steve and Laura; now no disrespect to the others but Steve and Laura are the young ones, but boy did they show us a snippet of real rural Suffolk life!! They took us along one very wet and rainy Monday morning to the Suffolk auction house in Campsey Ash. Let’s say I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that food is still auctioned off in this manner. It’s been a  truly fun experience and a serious eye opener to Suffolk life. We experienced a welcome to Suffolk like no other, and it’s been one huge insight into culture, creatures and family! The auction starts off with raw meat and birds, ducks, chickens, pigs etc.. and then goes onto game in feather (when in season) rabbits, snipe, wild ducks etc.. Then it moves onto live ducks, chickens and other farm yard animals, then onto fruit and vegetables, and finally, the auction ends with farm and gardening equipment and antiques all in one day and in one place. Bizarre, slightly crazy, and as I said, a real eye opener.

Here at the British Larder HQ we have plenty of them and unfortunately myxomatosis has managed to infect a few to the extent that we had to ask a good friend to remove them. It’s sad as we love rabbits. Ross and I had domestic rabbits as pets for a number of years and I must say that the first time Louise brought in a few rabbits in the fur I did have a little cry. Our last bunny Elly was a darling, she was that classic spoilt pet. Anyhow, these are food; I see them in a different light and treat them differently. I believe in only using wild rabbits and not farmed.

They are still pretty but at the same time they multiply daily which means we must make use of as many as we can. Wild rabbit here at the British Larder is popular, and this terrine is no exception. Not only is this terrine a work of art but tasty at the same time. I combine the wild rabbit meat with lightly smoked ham knuckle which comes from our good friends down at Dingley Dell farm along with the ever so pretty black trompette mushrooms and the bright green Savoy cabbages. We serve this terrine with home made quince chutney and toasted sour dough bread from Pump Street Bakery.

Making terrines is hard work; it takes skill and precision. It’s also a very satisfying job, once you cut into that first slice and admire the beauty of the marbling, and the taste if it’s seasoned well enough, is a very gratifying feeling. I like to make each and every terrine myself; perhaps because selfishly it’s the only thing I have complete control over, making the terrine from scratch and when it turns out beautifully it’s so greatly satisfying.

It’s amazing after all these years that something as simple as a terrine still excites me as a chef, I love making them, love nurturing them and turning them out to admire the splendor of craftsmanship. I have an immense amount of respect for a terrine, and these thoughts take me back to the hard days of Michelin starred kitchens. Your heart is racing in your throat, the chef is glaring at you as you turn it out onto the chopping board, and as you pick up the knife, his words cut through your head as he’s waiting for you to make a mistake. It took me a long time to gather the confidence and guts to cut the terrines, but those days are gone by and this is now our own restaurant, and yes, now I’m the big bad wolf standing and glaring at Steve as he cuts into the terrines! I hardly give him a hard time about the terrines, however, I hope that one day he will also have that sense of pride when he tells these kind of stories when he is older and wiser. I hope the pride and passion rubs off….I’m sure it does as he is also making some beautiful terrines.

As I said in previous posts, game does well. I could guess that if we only needed to sell game we would still have done pretty well. Our customers enjoy it and I must say it’s been the best amount of creative fun I could ever have imagined to have in the British Larder kitchen.

We set out to do something for everyone and felt the urge to cater for as many markets and tastes as we possibly can. Sandwiches and burgers, along with a ploughmans and steaks, all grace our lunch time menus, but this recipe is a fairly new one that we only started to serve a week or so ago, and boy oh boy is it doing well! I must say it’s a big “thank you” to Pump Street Bakery for producing these spectacular burger buns. A week ago one of the Pump Street team visited and tweeted about the venison burger; until then we did not really think much of it. The tweet did draw my attention to this humble burger and I started to keep track of its daily sales - now we are selling out every time we put it on the menu, hence me taking serious notice!

I’m sort of fearing for when the game season will end; I’m not sure what the next kind of ingredients will be to inspire us to create something new. Finding that new seasonal niche item almost feels like the impossible task that lies ahead. Having said that, we’ll have to worry about that another day, as right now I’m enjoying the game season too much!

We thought that instead of serving straight forward hand-cut potato chips, we will be a bit more daring and push the seasonal boat out a tad further. These roasted parsnip straws, dusted with a thyme and coriander seed salt, are certainly not your traditional fayre but they do offer something different.

Venison meat is very lean which means that if you use straight minced venison the burger could potentially be very dry. We mix through a bit of pork mince to add a little bit of fat which keeps the venison meat moist and succulent.

Hope you enjoy the game as much as we do!

Every week we have a different pheasant dish on the menu to offer variety, and to be honest, we simply do not get bored of being creative and coming up with something new each week. I will eventually get the recipe for Ross’s Pheasant Kiev one day and share it with you – it’s delicious!

This dish is what we call a team effort dish – nearly every member in the kitchen has contributed an idea or two to the creation of this dish. Maria sparked the whole idea by requesting us to do a slow-cooked pheasant dish and the rest all fell into place as the dish evolved. The pheasant and prune sausages are inspired by the delicious partridge and prune sausages that we make for the game tasting plate, and David the Village Veg man with his pink fir potatoes just had to feature too.

These birds are so pretty and they are always sold in pairs. Part of the reason for me embarking on the ventures of the British Larder in 2009 was because I think that chefs are privileged to see beautiful food produce in its raw state – sometimes it’s almost a sorry feeling that pretty-looking food should be peeled, plucked and chopped into smaller pieces. My passion for photography has always inspired me to portray the beauty I see in food, weather it’s raw or cooked.

We receive most of our game in the feather and fur; it’s a gory, messy yet satisfying job to pluck and skin it all… however Paul is the fastest pheasant plucker in our midst and Sorin is the skinner amongst us. Receiving the birds in feather is great; it put the skill back into our kitchen which is superb because we felt as chefs, we had lost the skill slightly. Our butchery skills are ropey and rusty but we are all working at it, honing and mastering the old skills. They say practice makes perfect – we certainly hope so! The worst part is to actually get rid of the feathers… they go absolutely everywhere, it’s a good thing that we are in the country!

The combination of the pink fir potatoes, celeriac and pearl barley is not coincidental - the earthy taste of these three ingredients, along with the pheasant, makes it a truly inspirational seasonal gem. When we construct dishes we encourage excitement for the palate and eye; the food must not only look pretty but with various textures it’s about making it interesting and exciting. Both Ross and I get bored of food easily and when we sit down to a meal we are looking for a dish that will keep our attention till the very last mouthful. This dish is undeniably one of those.

David Grimwood from the Froize brought me in this wonderful array of wild ducks. I must confess that before we opened the doors here in Suffolk both Ross and I had never plucked a bird or skinned a rabbit, and we are so incredibly grateful that we now know how it’s done. We armed ourselves with a bit of skill and it’s wonderful! Highly recommended for all enthusiastic cooks out there. It could be perceived as a bit of a gory task; however the satisfaction and achievement is second to none.

As chefs cooking primarily in London, we used to receive oven-ready birds in polystyrene packets covered in cling film and one would never actually see the real bird in feather. Now we are reeducating ourselves by familiarising ourselves with the tremendous and wonderful array of wild ducks. In the picture below there are four different varieties: mallard, shoveler, teal and wigeon. The teal is the smallest, shoveler has the long shovel like beak, the wigeon is the fat one and mallard the colorful one with the green head. The tastes all range form mild to rich and gamy in taste, and offer a brilliantly diversity in cooking – I made a wonderful game terrine with some of the wild ducks.

The fields around the Larder are home to plenty of cute furry bunnies - we spend hours staring at them at night, as they are … well, cute! However they do eat well and we can think of so many different dishes to cook with wild rabbit. For this game tasting platter the rabbit legs were turned into a delicious rillette, also known as a pate.

Red leg partridges are plentiful and for me are my favourite game bird. It’s small but has a subtle, gentle game taste. We often make partridge sausage rolls and serve them at the bar as a snack, or alternatively we make them into this delicious partridge and prune sausage rapped in smoked streaky bacon.

We  also use the bones and make a wonderful game stock which is perfect for a creamy parsnip soup served with partridge sausage rolls.

Last but not least is the piece de résistance,and that is the venison scotch egg. Mmm… it’s mouthwatering delicious and truly amazing. It’s a bit of hard work; labour intensive, but in our words it’s a labour of love!

This meat feast of game is not for the faint-hearted but definately worth the wait. The game season is short and before we know it it’s the end of January and all these wonderful delicacies will have to wait until the next game season.

Chef’s Tip: If you are not brave enough to pluck your own partridges and skin the rabbits then buy them oven ready from the Wild Meat Company or alternatively enroll on this wonderful Wild Meat in a Day event hosted by Food Safari here at the British Larder, Suffolk HQ.