So a big thank you again for telling the Good Food Guide about us. We can’t wait to see the paper copy

It does not stop there, the ingredients and method of production would also be controlled. This may finally finish the timeless argument once and for all … There are no carrots in a real Cornish Pasty.

There are three safety points that need to be in mind when you go blackberry picking; brambles are sharp, always wash what you pick, watch out for cars. The good news about brambles, if they are yours, is that they can be cut back drastically after the blackcurrant harvest and they will stay down for most of the year.

After the picking, you have plenty of choices of what to do with your fruit. Blackberry gin, crumble, jam or a rich sauce to go with game, goose or duck. Some of you will have spotted that last sentence and asking why goose and game are not game. My definition of game is wild but the majority of goose and duck are farmed.

If you want to go a stage further with the sauce, you could sieve it and spoon, warm, over ice cream.

Is science a new thing in the kitchen? Yes and No. New science is always new and that is commonly the gastronomic greatness that we see with the kitchen boffins. The No part goes back to medieval times and the means by which food was preserved or fermented. Science requires research and control to produce consistent results. This would have meant experimentation and testing on many foodstuffs we still have today; beer, wine, cheese, cured meats and dried harvest goods. Burton has a good example of this from the 12th century where monks produced beer. The abbeys and monasteries were home to scholarly behaviour as well as food and drink production.

Two ingredients used then are still used today in various household products, yeast and saltpetre. Without these two ingredients the evening pint or two and a bacon butty the next morning would be impossible. Order a meat feast pizza, I know it’s not British, but it is a good example of science in action. The base uses yeast, the salami is created with saltpetre (it kills bugs, especially the ones responsible for botulism) and dried oregano. Real corned beef, salted beef, uses saltpetre as a curing agent and this is a British product.

Anyway time to dabble with the blackpudding and treacle sorbet …

The hidden side of the game season is in the conservation of species, a main reason why there is no year round shooting. Organisations like The British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC) work on the basis of the balance between hunting and sustainability. Game is raised naturally, it’s lean, humanely treated, traditional and most importantly full of flavour.

One of favourite treatments of game is smoking. Venison and pigeon are especially deservant of cherry or maple wood. This is accompanied by a seasonal fruit source, often blackberry and other hedge treats.

If you want to know more about when you can get hold of game, we have compiled a PDF chart of the British game seasons.

I grew up in the Lake District and we had red squirrels living in an abandoned bird box in the garden. My dad would hand feed the squirrels and they were pretty good neighbours. A few miles down the road Beatrix Potter wrote Squirrel Nutkin and I gained a Tufty club certificate. So, I like red squirrels, they are native to the UK and are now endangered.

The grey squirrel however, is not a nice creature. It will clear out berries, pillage nut trees, dig up bulbs, destroy birds nests and their eggs, kill red squirrels with squirrel pox (they themselves are immune), eat the wiring in your roof and ravage your hamster without so much as a cheap bottle of wine and some smooth banter.

In a field, you would shoot pigeons and rabbits if they are harmful to your crops. So why not the squirrel? I guess it’s because they look cute and very few people buy into the idea that these creatures are as dangerous as they are. Grey squirrels are pests, simple as that. When you catch one in a trap, you would risk prosecution to release them as they are classed as a pest. You then have two choices; hand them over to a sanctuary or dispatch them. Most of these traps do not have any means to help you out. There are no connections so you can plug the thing into the mains, nor is there is a convenient mob of victimised field mice to perform a lynching.

The only thing you can do is get your hands dirty. Maybe the manufacturers should provide freepost packages to send them over to the RSPCA, they seem to know what to do. Of course, there would be air holes in the boxes, anything else would be cruel?

www.hasbean.co.uk

But first a cautionary tale about coffee:

“Like all good things in life, the drinking of coffee may be abused.
Indeed, those having an idiosyncratic susceptibility to alkaloids should
be temperate in the use of tea, coffee, or cocoa. In every
high-tensioned country there is likely to be a small number of people
who, because of certain individual characteristics, can not drink coffee
at all. These belong to the abnormal minority of the human family. Some
people can not eat strawberries; but that would not be a valid reason
for a general condemnation of strawberries. One may be poisoned, says
Thomas A. Edison, from too much food. Horace Fletcher was certain that
over-feeding causes all our ills. Over-indulgence in meat is likely to
spell trouble for the strongest of us. Coffee is, perhaps, less often
abused than wrongly accused. It all depends. A little more tolerance!”

All About Coffee, by William H. Ukers, 1922

I came up with the blackbirds from old sock, yellow golf tees, straw and garden wire. At 10 o’clock on the Sunday  morning, the assembled scarecrow was installed on the end of our drive. Hundreds of on-lookers came past and took photo’s of “Marco” and we did pretty much the same by playing village tourists for the day.

Sometime later in the day, we got a text message from some friends to congratulate us on our winning entry. The judges had stealthed in, put a 1st Place rosette on Marco for first place in Traditional Scarecrow, Business category.

Thank you, a great day and it certainly put a smile on our faces to get a prize.

Sadly another pest is prevalent at the moment, my arch-enemy, the grey squirrel. The walnut tree is starting to show the first fruit of the year and the tree rats have noticed.

What could go nicer with some of those summery herbs, but lobster, prawns and some of the first scallops (check at the end of the month).

Anyway, just putting the finishing touches to a recipe involving squirrel, beetroot and thyme …

Cherries are at their best and the blossom has dropped. One of the first signs of their appearance is the sudden arrival of red bird poo everywhere there are cherry trees. Perfect combination is woodpigeon with cherry sauce, both in peak condition. Very little other game is in season or available.

If fish is your thing, sea fish are at their best. As always, try and source sustainably and locally.