Crawling through a moss-strewn stream on my hands and knees after six hours tramping and trailing up glen and doon valley by Tayside in the Scottish Highlands, the water flowing through and around my attire, I’m reminded why hunting deer is called stalking. It’s not a question of dismounting from a Land Rover into a field and simply blasting away wildly at some docile animals until you’ve felled enough for dinner. It’s taken all the knowledge and skills of the Ardtalnaig Estate’s third-generation gamekeeper Ally McNaughton to outflank a small group of highly alert and able deer, to get us the requisite 150 yards away so I can fire the only successful shot I have made before they high-tail it into the next valley.
One shot, one kill and a 105kg beast of true beauty awaits the expectant diners at South African chef Pete Gottgens’ award-winning hotel and restaurant, the Ardeonaig Hotel. Knowing the exertions needed to bring such fine food to the table gives real impetus to honouring it correctly on the plate. Having moved here from South Africa, cooked for Nelson Mandela and turned the hotel into one of the most successful in Scotland, Pete knows a thing or two about cooking his local produce. “I love my job and live for this, where it’s all about the local ingredients,” he says. “But I don’t just take produce because it’s local, it’s got to have the quality.”
Follow Pete’s Top Five Tips for cooking game this Autumn:
1. Above all, keep it simple. You want nature as it is, in its prime condition. The less you do with it, the better it’s going to taste.
2. The animal already has flavour, all you’ve got to do is warm it. A little salt and pepper, and that’s it. Partridge roasted in the oven with onion, salt and pepper and a few fresh herbs from the garden: and nothing else. What the animal has eaten gives us the flavour.
3. With hare, take the meat off the bone, roast the bones and make a sauce with these, a little red wine, onions and carrots, roll the hare in a little butter, and that’s it.
4. The choice of accompaniments does have a bearing. Look at what is in the area of the animal, and use that. Pigeons traditionally feed on pea fields, or barley, so make a barley risotto to go with it. Marry the two back together because that’s what it’s all about. With venison, they eat blaeberries up on the hill, so we make a blaeberry sauce when we serve it.
5. If you can’t trace where an ingredient has come from, don’t buy it.
For more information on the Ardeonaig Hotel, visit www.ardeonaighotel.co.uk. Rapid train travel to nearby Glasgow, with on-board catering in First Class, is available from Virgin Trains (www.virgintrains.co.uk). Car hire is available from www.carhire3000.com
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