The Mysterious Affair Of The Vanishing Game

On Boxing Day, my brother went on a shoot, and bagged some pheasant and some woodcock.

When we were at Cornerstones a few days later, Adrian and Marion invited us over to their place for a meal. As we came to leave, Adrian said “I’ve put two freezer boxes in your bag – one’s pheasant, one’s woodcock, both prepared and ready for you to casserole”

Which is very typical of the generous bloke that he is. Neither box was labelled, so I wasn’t absolutely sure which was which, but I put them both in the freezer. I decided at the weekend to make a casserole. Delia Online has a recipe for pheasant casserole [with whole birds], so I tweaked it a bit and prepared it before church. Now I did think that there was quite a lot of blood in the box, and the texture of the pieces of meat was a bit erm…unusual.

But I have little experience of cooking game – and was grateful that the box was full of ready prepared bite-sized pieces. So I duly stuck them in the Le Creuset as per the Blessed St D’s recipe, and toddled off to church.

When we sat down to eat it, I was bothered. My meat tasted just like liver. I said nothing. Then Bob said “This tastes just like liver” – we fished out the bits of meat and sliced them up – and yes, these were very clearly pieces of liver. “How odd” we thought. [but we ate them all the same- it was our Sunday lunch, after all]

“Perhaps Marion bought some liver and put it in a similar box in the freezer, and Adrian got out the wrong box” I suggested.

“I don’t think they eat liver. Perhaps she bought it to feed the dogs” said Bob.

So this week, when Bob visited them during his stay at Cornerstones, he mentioned the fact that our box of pheasant was in fact a box of liver. “But I never buy liver” said Marion.

Well I certainly never bought it – and it is definitely the box which came back, frozen, from Norfolk and went straight into our freezer here. I have yet to thaw out the meat in the other box.

So where did this liver come from?

And what happened to the pheasant?

The moral of the story is-

Always label the boxes you put in your freezer!

Otherwise you may find the pheasant is revolting, or something equally offal!