Game Hairy Bikers' Best of British

You know, we believe that Britain has the best food in the world.

Not only can we boast fantastic ingredients.

-Outstanding food producers.

-Oh, look at that.

And innovative chefs.

But we also have an amazing food history.

-Oh, brilliant.

-Oh, wow!

Don't eat them like that. You'll break your teeth.

Now during this series,

we are going to be taking you on a journey into our culinary past.

Everything's ready, let's get cracking.

-We'll explore its revealing stories.

-BOTH: Wow!

And meet the heroes that keep our food heritage alive.

It's a miracle what comes out of the oven.

And of course,

be cooking up a load of dishes that reveal our foodie evolution.

Look at that. That's a proper British treat.

We have a taste of history.

Quite simply - the Best Of British.

Today's show is a celebration of some of

this country's most amazing food.

Its fans say it's healthy, sustainable,

environmentally friendly, affordable and totally tasty.

We're talking about game, of course.

From feather to fur, game is the term used for the collection

of wild animals and birds that are hunted and eaten.

And for centuries, we've been stalking,

gathering and dining on the delights of this edible heritage.

Britain has a long tradition of hunting both for sport and for food.

From the great hunting feasts of William the Conqueror to the glorious 12th.

With venison, pheasant and grouse taking pride of place on the menus of some of our finest restaurants.

But it's not just the preserve of the toffs.

Ordinary folk have relied on game over the centuries

and they've devised ingenious ways

of getting their hands on everything

from wildfowl to rabbits.

And you know what, you'd be amazed at what you can do with a ferret.

He's not wrong.

He might look cute and cuddly, but this domesticated type of polecat is

a fearsome hunter, perfectly adapted for putting down rabbit holes.

And bringing home some game for your tea.

Their eyesight isn't very good,

but their sense of smell is excellent and they're very bendy.

If you are fairly fit you could probably touch your toes.

If you're double jointed, you could put your chin on your bottom.

But what you could never do is bend sideways like that

or like that because he's just one big universal joint.

Whilst we associate ferrets with working class culture.

You silly little devil, ain't ya?

And wriggling around people's trousers,

ferreting was originally an entirely aristocratic pursuit.

In the 13th century, if you wanted to own a ferret,

by law you had to have an income of 40 shillings,

which meant you were seriously minted.

By Queen Elizabeth's reign, ferrets were still associated with money and status.

But gradually they became available to everyone.

By the 19th century, anyone could go onto common land with a ferret

and catch a rabbit for your tea.

Nowadays you don't need a flexible friend if you want to eat rabbit.

And you certainly don't need a fancy chef to cook it for you.

In our Best Of British kitchen,

we'll show you how to rustle up a simple dish

of rabbit with prunes, cream and brandy.

An absolute game gem that combines the best of British ingredients

with a bit of French je ne sais quoi.

Now all these posh folks, they've been out for centuries

chasing stags, shooting grouse.

But it hasn't always been the preserve of the rich.

Poor folk like a good old blast too. For us it was bunnies and rabbits.

Just get a couple of rabbits for' pot, mother.

Rabbit's been around for ages. We've shot, eaten and loved them.

We are cooking a lovely dish with rabbits. A bit French.

It's rabbits with prunes flamed in Cognac.

But you know, it turns the humble rabbit into a prince. It's posh.

It's tasty, it's lovely.

I'll start with the prunes and the brandy.

I'll start with browning off the rabbit.

Look at this, a couple of rabbits there.

You can get a rabbit for about three pounds.

So that's only six pounds worth there.

-Six pounds of meat?

-Lovely!

And I tell you what, this dish goes like a rabbit. It's fantastic.

It's quick, it's simple, it's tasty and it's...oh!

These are non-soak prunes.

Put them in a pan with six tablespoons of brandy.

Now you're talking! Myers, now you're talking.

Brandy.

One.

Two, three.

Four. Five. Six.

And then we leave the prunes to macerate in that lovely brandy.

Now I've put some butter and I'm going to put some oil into

the pan, bring it to temperature, season the rabbit on both sides.

Thank you. Season the rabbit on both sides and brown it off.

Season both sides. Just salt into it.

Now carefully flambe the prunes.

Smells like flesh to me!

# We'll get the fire brigade. Get the fire brigade.

# I think the kitchen is starting to really burn... # Woo.

Wa-hey. Woo.

I see a sign.

-I could get used to this.

-You're a worry, you are.

Right, enough of that.

Put the fire out.

HE LAUGHS

-I've got no hair left on my arms!

-Dave?

-Dave.

-Eh?

-You haven't got any eyebrows either.

No, no, you really haven't.

What's happened to my hair line?

That's it. You see, wasn't like that before he started this show.

He had a full head of hair.

Just leave those to soak till the end of the dish.

Start chopping your bacon

and shallots in anticipation for pan action later on down the line.

Now just start to fry these off in batches.

Don't try and overcrowd the pan

because if you try and overcrowd the pan they're not going to fry.

Two banana shallots.

That's what we're after.

See that, that's the saddle, that bit there.

Oh, that's rabbit fillet steak, that is. Beautiful.

And we're just going to put a little bit of colour on.

This is a humble dish made good, this.

You know, in the late 14th century rabbits were an expensive luxury.

A lot of the recipes then advocated roasting them

with the head still on.

I suppose it's so you'd see it's a rabbit and not your local moggy.

A little bit more oil.

Have you ever read Watership Down?

-Yes.

-It's sad, wasn't it?

-Yeah, it was.

-And rabbits have always featured in literature, haven't they?

-Always.

-Watership Down, you know, Bugs Bunny.

-Bugs Bunny.

-Thumper in Bambi.

-Yeah.

Eee, look at it now, it could almost be chicken.

Indeed you can do this dish with chicken thighs.

Allow two chicken thighs per person.

Next, fry the chopped streaky bacon.

Now what we want to do with this bacon is,

we just want it to go nice and crisp.

Not very crisp but we want the fat to go quite crispy.

Right, so, can you see what we've got there? They're not crispy bits.

-That's perfect, isn't it? They're just golden.

-Yes, exactly. That.

The fried bacon joins the rabbit in the casserole.

To the pan add the shallots and just...sweat until translucent.

Can you see? I've cut them longways. Just for that little touch of class.

To the onions add two tablespoons of flour.

One. Two.

Time to add the liquid. Now you could use white wine.

-But to kind of make it a bit more British we are using cider.

-We are.

And this is 300 ml of cider.

Got some stock here. Pour half of it in at this point.

-This is good stock. It looks like jelly.

-What a wonderful smell.

To that we add one tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

Like that. And two teaspoons of wholegrain mustard.

Beautiful.

And a little bouquet garni. A little bunch of thyme tied together.

Obviously we chuck this out before serving.

-Oh.

-And...a bayleaf.

-How lovely.

-Now, I know it's a bit of a strange convention.

When you put the flour on top of what, in essence,

is sauteed onions and it goes, like, really thick.

Don't freak out because all that's doing is coating the onions

in flour, cooking that flour off a little bit

and then as soon as you add liquid, look what's happening.

It's just thickening it.

And there's no lumps or any problem, it's just lovely.

We'll add some more liquid so don't worry,

-it won't be that thick when it's done.

-Right.

Beautiful.

Now top this up with the remaining stock.

I'm going to cover this with a cartouche.

A cartouche is a sheet of greaseproof paper

that's cut to fit the dish.

What it'll do is it will stop it cooking dry too quickly.

Put that on the top.

Lid on. And place that in a preheated oven, 160 degrees Celsius

for about one and a half, two hours.

-Actually if you leave it in for two hours, it's not going to hurt, really.

-No.

Rabbit.

# Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit... #

At one time, there wasn't a market or a butchers shop in Britain

that wouldn't be over-flowing with fresh, fantastic produce during the game season.

And in post-war Britain, rabbit, a cheap and readily available meat,

was rarely off the menu.

But when a deadly virus called myxomatosis

arrived in Britain in 1953, over 95% of the bunny population

was wiped out, and rabbit quickly fell off the weekly menu.

But now, from Michelin restaurants to small country cottages,

there's a bit of a rabbit revival going on.

And if you're happy to give it a try, rabbit is a rewarding

and flavoursome change from the ordinary.

-I think by now that's a very "hot cross bunny"! Ha-hey!

-Oh, dear me, man!

Let's remove the cartouche.

-Ooh!

-Oh, nice.

These are the prunes oozing in brandy.

I'll just light the gas under this.

We'll heat those prunes through, because now they're stone cold,

and add the cream.

Oh, man.

And just give that a little stir.

And really as soon as that's come up to temperature, we can serve.

Now...check for seasoning.

Look what I've got. I've got some cabbage and dauphinoise potatoes.

Ooh, saddle. Primo.

There we go, that's the one.

-And some prunes, yeah?

-Oh, for sure.

So near, yet so far.

Lovely, creamy, dauphinoise.

Cabbage.

The rabbit eats the cabbage

and they both end up on the same plate together.

Beautiful.

So there you have it.

A delicious, simple dish that's definitely worth rabbiting on about.

Whilst rabbit was for the masses

and readily available to anyone who wanted it,

there's one type of game that has long been the preserve of the rich.

# Hello, dear... #

The monarch of the meat is venison.

In Norman times, deer parks provided the lord of the manor

with a ready supply of fresh venison,

and by the early 14th century there were 3,200 deer parks in England.

Peasants, on the other hand, got a pretty bad deal.

The Elizabethans would punish poachers

by castrating, blinding or even hanging them.

Ooh, that's a bit harsh.

By the 18th century,

the highly prized deer parks were heavily landscaped,

and venison was still very much the flavour of the day.

Well, if you had more than a few groats to your title, obviously.

-One man.

-..and his dog.

..who knows all about cooking venison the 18th century British way

is our resident food historian, Ivan Day.

Ivan's home in the Lake District is a living museum where he brings

the sights, smells, and flavours of the past to life,

using historical recipes and a variety of odd-looking gadgets.

A lot of my friends call me the Clockwork Cook

because I cook with a range of these extraordinary early

historical mechanisms and it is a very sophisticated way of cooking.

It's my preferred way of roasting, to use one of my machines.

Today he's going to cook up an 18th century posh venison kebab,

roasted in front of the fire and served with a medieval sauce.

The first thing I've got to do is to cut this venison into little medallions.

They'll be a little bit too thick, really, and small

so I'm going to hack them out with the back of a knife

which is a technique which was called scotching.

In fact, what I'll get are things called collops

which are thin rashers, if you like, of venison.

Venison was once exclusively for the British aristocracy.

In fact, Henry VIII wooed Anne Boleyn with gifts of it.

I mean, I reckon she would have preferred diamonds, like, but neh mind.

Next he sows chunky bacon fat into the collops,

with a little help from a nifty set of 18th century tools.

I'm very lucky to actually own this remarkable survival

from the period of the recipe, from the early 18th century.

Which is a set of larding pins. Every cook had one of these.

They were as important to him as his knife.

You don't get them in Morecombe High Street!

And basically you've got these little needles

with these flexible ends that you can shove a piece of bacon into

and you can literally sow it into the meat to tenderise it

so that there's lots of fat in what is actually a very lean meat

so that will lubricate it and cook it to perfection.

23 collops to go. This could take some time, you know.

You can always fast forward to the next part in telly, though.

It's time to move on.

18th century meat cookery used a bucketload of different herbs

for extra flavour and this dish calls for a mixture

of thyme, rosemary, parsley, chervil and marjoram.

Then mix them in with a little bit of very finely chopped beef suet.

And this is actually also like the lardons.

It will lubricate each slice of venison

and there's also a little bit of egg yolk in there

to stick all of these sheets together.

What made this Georgian venison delight seriously indulgent was the use of spices.

Exotic cloves, long peppercorns and nutmeg

all the way from the Spice Islands of Indonesia.

A truly international meal, created here in Britain.

What we're going to do is to stir it altogether and make

a kind of herb butter from it but without the butter.

A herb suet, if you like.

I'm going to spread this in-between my little collops of venison

and stack them up in a tower.

What I will create in fact is really a very ancient,

very early British doner kebab but much posher than a doner kebab.

I can't wait to see what this turns out like. Let's get a move on, eh?

Right, it's getting a little bit unstable

but that's no problem cos I'm going to put the skewer through in a moment

which will hold the whole thing together.

-'Careful, Ivan!'

-Actually I'm going to have to do it like that.

After being skewered and tied, the spit is finally run through it.

For centuries keeping the spit turning was a thankless task

which was done by hand or even by dogs powering a wheel.

But during the 16th century, a new mechanism appeared

on the culinary market which was really the world's first robot.

It was called a jack in this country

and it enabled you to rotate your meat.

But also it enabled you to cook the meat to perfection

if you understood the technology.

Ivan's clockwork spit goes back to the 1720s,

exactly the same era as the recipe.

Now here's a clever bit. Ivan bastes the venison with red wine. This drips off

with the meat gravy and is used to make the sauce.

This sauce is a very ancient sauce for serving with game

and venison and goes right back to the medieval period

in terms of almost like a hunting sauce.

And it was called a galantine.

Ivan uses something called a chafing dish,

that holds red hot coals from the fire,

on which to prepare the sauce.

He mixes red wine, vinegar, sugar and cinnamon together.

It is, in effect, a sweet, sour sauce.

But the most important ingredient that'll go in this,

all the juices that are now dripping off the venison

so the actual gravy from the venison is going to be the real background flavour in this.

The medieval way of thickening a gravy like this was to use breadcrumbs.

And do you know, I think I might try that next time I have a roast.

BELL RINGS

Right, dinner is served.

Now that's one kebab you WON'T see on a Friday night.

And then what we do, we separate it again.

We take it, individual collop by individual collop

and arrange it on a nice plate and then pour the sauce over it.

Dish done.

That looks delicious.

With experts like Ivan around,

we can keep looking to history for foodie inspiration.

A thing that never changes is good-tasting food.

So a remarkable 1723 doner kebab. Venison in collops.

-ARCHIVE:

-This machine can pluck pheasants in a fraction of the time that it takes by hand.

By the Sixties you could buy your game already plucked, preserved and tinned, to eat any time of year.

And they're topped up with jelly before being sent away to the processing oven.

MUSIC: "Swing" by Zero 7

But for a truly fresh taste of our heritage,

you need to wait until the autumn to bag yourself something wild and wonderful.

We're heading to the Highlands of Scotland,

about an hour or so away outside Inverness

to join a grouse shooting party on the Balavil estate.

DOG BARKS INDOORS

Hello gentleman. Very nice to see you, Dave, Simon.

-Lovely to see you.

-Hi, how are you? Good to see you.

-Very well, come on in.

-Thank you.

Our totally game Best of British food hero

is Allan Macpherson-Fletcher who is the latest in a long line of Macphersons

to oversee the 7,500 acre Balavil estate.

They've been hunting game on this estate for over 200 hundred years

and they've got the trophies to prove it.

Grouse shooting became a national obsession

in the second half of the 19th century, after Queen Victoria bought Balmoral.

In its hey-day, shooting parties were reserved for royalty

and the over-privileged, and they really went to town.

In 1913, George V led a party that killed 3,937 birds in one day.

-DOG BARKS

-Nowadays, the number of birds shot is closely monitored

by the gamekeeper, who ensures that enough are left to breed for the following year.

And it's not just sport... It's a business.

Today's guests have come all the way from Austria to shoot.

And have paid £500 a day each for the privilege.

Hands up who's shooting.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Gents, you've all been here before or you've shot grouse before.

Nonetheless, can I still give you a quick chat about the safety?

When the line of beaters is coming in towards you

they will blow a horn about 200 metres out.

However, it's your responsibility not to shoot them. Also...

-'POSH VOICE:

-It really would be bad form to shoot the beater,

-'wouldn't it?'

-'Aye, you're right there.'

What they're after is this "wee cow'rin, timorous beastie", the famous Highland grouse.

Grouse has been on the menu for centuries.

Back in medieval times, it was just one of the ingredients in a game pie

that included heron, crane, swan and stork.

Game pie was often the spectacular centrepiece of a Tudor feast.

And in 1861, Mrs Beeton dedicated an entire chapter to grouse and game

in her domestic household management bible.

Since the Game Act of 1831 made it illegal to shoot out of season,

grouse can only be hunted between the 12th August, commonly called the Glorious Twelfth,

and December 10th.

So, Alan, what's happening now?

-Right. The guns are all aboard.

-Yes.

One or two of them are walking into position.

The ones on the top of the hill are going by Argocat.

We've a line of ten butts running down the shoulder of the hill.

-And a butt is?

-It's a protection.

A stone-built little protection. so that it gives you camouflage.

The birds don't see you standing up.

They've got fantastic eyesight, grouse.

If you're standing up, bobbing around, they would swerve off and avoid you.

-And all the grouse, all the game is eaten?

-All eaten.

We tend to hang on naturally to all the best and youngest grouse for ourselves.

The rest go to a game dealer and get shipped to London,

no doubt to the restaurants down there.

'On the 12th of August every year,

'restaurateurs race to get grouse on the menu,

'driving hundreds of miles in a day for the first batches of this small, meaty bird.'

'The prices can be sky high, but if you're prepared to wait a few days,

'the cost can often drop by half.'

There is a school of thought that doesn't agree with hunting and field sports.

What's your answer to that?

Well, we all respect each other. I am very happy to defend what we do here.

Um, we have to crop these birds and the deer on the hill for their own good.

For a start, if we didn't control them,

the deer would get too old and die a slow, lingering death,

because there's not enough food out here.

The grouse, if we didn't have Arthur on the hill,

maintaining the population through vermin control,

the hawks would take them all, there would be nothing left.

-And when there's no grouse left, the hawks disappear.

-Yes.

So it's one of those things that I defend the shooting side.

And it's not just we are out here enjoying the bloodthirsty sport of killing birds,

there's a wider picture to all of that.

'All the birds shot today will be collected,

'hung and plucked, ready for the pot.'

'So with the first brace of game in the bag,

'we're heading back to the house to get cooking.'

-Come on in. Now then, Simon, Paul.

-Very nice to meet you.

-Good to see you.

If anybody can show us how to prepare these grouse, it's going to be you.

You've got through a few in your time.

-I've done a few in my time in the last ten years on this estate.

-What's interesting,

and you must find this, the reverence in which the bird is held

-by everybody that's shot it and the household and what you do with it.

-Yes.

-It's fabulous.

-The whole cycle is there, from the estate to the plate.

And that's what I like. In some ways, I find that more honourable

-than going to a supermarket and buying your meat in a plastic bag.

-Hear, hear.

Croutons are toasted, spread with grass pate and used as a base.

-Some nice streaky bacon.

-Good honest cooking.

-It is.

-I love it.

What we do this for is to keep the breast nice and moist.

Plus the fact that everybody likes it.

-THEY LAUGH

-It's the pickings, isn't it?

-Yes.

-In the Aga. 20 to 25 minutes.

-That's it.

-Simple as that.

-Is that it? Excellent.

'The household has a long history of shooting parties

'and Alan is lucky enough to have the records dating back to 1780.'

It's interesting in that it's a well-documented shooting estate.

Most of the estates here started maybe in Victorian times in keeping records,

but we were fortunate in that we had a extraordinary gentlemen

who rented this estate back in 1780.

And kept a marvellous diary of his exploits here.

He completely bankrupted himself, but had fun while it lasted.

He was keen on his food. He was keen on his food. His menus out there.

He invited the whole of society out there.

Here met with the Laird and Captain MacPherson.

Here is an example of his menus. "A hodge podge. Remove.

"A roast pike of 7lbs."

"Sauces, greens, reindeer tongues, potatoes, chickens."

Then you get into the second course. THEY LAUGH

"Loin of mutton, black game and partridge,

"current jelly, capsicum, elder, garlic, vinegars, powerade and char."

"A carving. Biscuits, stilton cheese, Cheshire, butter, goat's milk." Absolutely wonderful.

-It's a good old feast.

-He had fun.

-This was the 1790s?

-1790, yeah.

'A superb sounding menu,

'but we've got something simpler to try back in the kitchen.'

All right, boys? There you go.

-What a treat. Thank you very much. Thank you.

-One for you, Dave, one for you, Si.

-And a knife and fork, unless you wish to use your fingers.

-No, this is a rare treat, thank you.

And if you game chips.

-It's even that more exciting, because we've been up there where they live.

-Ah.

Ah, that is superb.

It's just cooked perfectly through.

-Look at that moist, beautiful meat.

-Mm-hm.

This is the bit I've been dying to... My crouton.

Here's a man who likes to get it all on the fork at the one time.

-Oh, yeah. That's what it's on the plate for.

-That full sensation.

He's worried it might not get it all in his mouth.

That is immense. Beautiful. Absolutely immense. Oh.

What you're eating there, that breast muscle, you saw how fast those birds were flying today.

And these are completely wild birds.

There is no artificial feeding on these.

All the food they're getting is completely natural.

Thank you so, so much. Look at that.

-Now there's the best of British on a fork. Look at that.

-Very much so.

I mean, I think it's a real treat to be able to have food literally from the field to the plate

in such a wonderful, fresh, vibrant way.

-It's the Highlands!

-Wow.

-Crikey.

-It's been a great pleasure having you with us.

'Nowadays, you don't have to be a member of the Royal family with six wives to enjoy some venison -

'the most majestic of meats.'

We're diving back into the Best of British kitchen to rustle up a feast fit for a king.

Well, on a 21st-century budget.

Isn't that beautiful? Look at the colour of that meat. It's lean, it's flavoursome,

but, you've got to be careful how you cook it.

-That's because it's lean. Anyway, game on!

-Oh! What?!

We're going to make a venison dish,

-which is truly for Princes, Kings, paupers alike.

-It is, it is.

-Venison cobbler.

-Oh, you see? See that mix, Royal meat, cobbler, common as muck.

-Oh-ho.

What is a venison cobbler?

-It's a stew that's kind of got savoury scones on the top.

-Yes.

And the scones come together like cobbles,

-but it's rather like a dumpling gets the nice bits, the gravy?

-Yes.

-Cobbler's the same, it soaks it up from underneath.

-Right.

First off, we've got to make a venison casserole, but a blooming good one.

-This dish you could substitute for shoulder of lamb, stewing steak.

-You could.

Either would work perfectly well,

-but then it wouldn't be a venison cobbler.

-No, it would be something else then.

Right. Tell you what I need, I need two onions and a carrot.

I need a pan, some oil and celery.

-Now we're back to that old chestnut.

-Yes.

It's the basis of all things lovely, so all I'm going to do is prepare these onions

in a way that we've prepared many thousands of onions before us.

We're going to take the skin off and slice them. All right?

Sunflower oil goes in a pan.

Two sticks of celery.

Put that in to fry.

There's nothing more noble than when you see deer, is there?

It's just such a beautiful animal and there's lots of different types.

There's fellow deer, which is good for meat, and roe deer, which is good for meat.

There's red deer, which is good for meat.

-But my favourite is the tasty little one, the muntjac.

-Oh, yes, the little fella.

Chuck your carrots.

Now we just cook this gently for ten minutes until the onions soften.

To that I add two tablespoons of flour

and one teaspoonful of English mustard.

And the flour sticks to the onions

-and that's going to be our thickening agent.

-Next thing,

-is 500 mills of beer.

-That's a pint in old money near enough.

-Ooh, that's thick.

-Isn't it? And then we ad 250mls of water.

We'll bring that back to the boil and then we'll add the venison.

Look at that.

Now, in goes this lovely bit of venison.

Look at how rich the colour of that meat is.

Look at that. Fabulous.

-That will be full of iron, that.

-Absolutely.

Give it a stir.

'Two tablespoons of chopped thyme are added to the pot.'

Pop that in.

And it's just the leaves, not the stalks,

because we're not going to strain this. What goes in will end up on your plate.

And then we add two bay leaves. Just crumpled.

And then some redcurrant jelly.

Once that jelly is dissolved, we put that into a casserole dish,

put that into an oven, preheated 160C for a fan oven,

and leave it there to moulder for about two hours, really.

-Hour and a half, two hours.

-Two and a half.

-Yes.

-Turn it down, leave it for three.

As long as it doesn't go dry, you'll be all right.

The longer you leave it, the tender it's going to be.

Phwoar! How lovely is that?

We hope that cooks down, or else there's no room for our cobbles.

Right.

Beautiful.

Now. What shall we do?

-Crochet?

-Oh, no!

Viewers, you just don't know how much he loves to knit to while away the hours.

-Beautiful.

-Lovely job. Pepper, salt.

And we use lemon juice.

About a good tablespoon of lemon juice.

-Don't be frightened with the old pepper.

-Nah.

-Get it in.

Perfect.

The lemon juice sharpens it up nicely. Have a taste?

-That sharpens it up, all right.

-Good.

Time to get cobbling.

Into a food processor put in self-raising flour.

Think a cobble is like making a scone.

It has to rise.

The baking powder in the flour will enable this to happen.

Some salt goes into this. About a teaspoon.

Some butter. And whizz this to crumbs.

I'm not going to make the dough in the processer,

because I feel, using the milk, it's quite a soft dough,

it would actually just, well, it would go to mush.

So just whizz this to a crumb-like form.

Pulse is better, because if you just let it go,

it could just go terribly...sort of smeary.

I mean, there's not much butter to the flour on this one.

It's not like when you're making pastry, where's a lot of butter.

Et, voila!

Put the flour and butter and salt mixture into Granny's bowl.

-Every house used to have one of these, didn't it?

-Yes, they did!

-They still have.

-Yeah.

Ours was used for everything, from hotpot

to baking bread,

to soaking my mother's feet.

Everything was done in that bowl. Right.

Add milk.

I'll just form the dough. This can be quite rustic.

Whoo-ooh-ooh! Oh, no.

-It's all measured.

-Oh! Ho-ho-ho.

That's it. Lovely.

Little Mr Sifter.

Oh-oh! Lucky!

-Sack the juggler.

-Oh-ho!

Wait a minute. Are you ready?

Not here in Downton Abbey!

-Whoo! Phew.

-Roll it out.

Now we're aiming for chunky cobblers, so just cutting them out.

A little cookie cutter, little, chunky cobblers.

You get about a dozen.

-There you are. Look at that!

-Lovely.

-Isn't it sweet?

'Then pack the cobblers tightly round the edge of the stew.'

And they're going to rise up.

-Like a scone.

-Shall I get another one in?

-Oh, aye.

-Just.

-Well done.

-Great.

Now then, what I want to do is just brush the top of each cobbler

with a little bit of egg.

And they're going to have a lovely finish on them when they rise.

If you're doing this for a dinner party,

you can cook the venison part the day before, let it go cold,

and just set the cobblers on top of the cold dish,

and then bake it off.

It really doesn't matter.

Now, this goes into the oven...

Topless.

160 degrees Celsius, for 30 minutes until your cobblers are brown

and your stew's reduced a bit.

-That's got to be ready, mate.

-Ready.

Oh!

Beautiful thing.

Good as!

That is a triumph.

It is, isn't it? Those little cobblers swallow up a treat.

Beautiful.

That's reduced nicely.

It has.

Which intensifies the flavour to give more satisfaction.

-Indeed.

-Indeed. Shall we have a dibble?

Should we?

-Let's have a dabble, dibble.

-Oh, yes!

This would be lovely served with mashed potatoes and runner beans.

British runners. It's the cobbler I've got to go for, isn't it?

Yeah. Listen to them, man.

So light. Look at that. One fork and in pieces.

Mmm!

Mmm-mm-mmm!

Good?

That venison... Look at that, it's just falling apart.

Oh, man!

Good, isn't it?

Mm-hmm!

We should eat more venison, you know.

It's very plentiful, it's very sustainable,

and it's as free range as you like. I mean,

you never get a battery deer, do you?

No.

Whoa!

And you know, when you get tired of dumplings,

make yourself a cobbler.

-Now that is wonderful - great British game.

-Aye.

# Now I'm always touched by your presence, dear

# I'm still in touch with your presence, dear

-# Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.

-#

Some of the finest food our countryside can provide

flies, runs and swims freely,

and has done for centuries.

So, whether you catch it or shoot it...

poach it or buy it,

..roast it or skewer it...

..why not follow in the footsteps of your forefathers,

and get yourself some game?

It's high in protein, low in fat,

with a variety of flavour to satisfy the most demanding of palettes.

And, if you want to find out more, visit:

..to discover some amazing facts about the history of food,

and, to find out how to cook the recipes in today's show.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd