Pheasant lands on school menus
GCSE students will be taught how to cook pheasant thanks to school teachers partnering with BASC's Taste of Game campaign
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Stuart Forster/REX/Shutterstock (2669371s) Roast breast of pheasant is served with a jus. The traditional English dish is garnished mushrooms and chestnut puree. British Food - Mar 2013
School pupils across the UK are to learn about the benefits of game meat after BASC’s Taste of Game campaign teamed up with teachers to get pheasant cooking lessons added to the curriculum.
Secondary school teachers will attend an interactive workshop at the Food Teachers Centre’s Get Set for GCSE event in Birmingham later this month, which will demonstrate how to prepare and cook two simple pheasant recipes. The centre is a group dedicated to better food teaching.
Nationwide sessions will follow, before pheasant cookery is introduced in classes for GCSE students, with an estimated 60,000 pupils receiving lessons over the next three years.
Donate birds to schools
Taste of Game is encouraging shoots to help support the scheme by donating birds to schools. Its development manager, Annette Woolcock, said: “This is an exciting project which will put healthy, nutritious game meat directly in front of the next generation.
“Game meat is a great food, pure and simple. It is healthy, sustainable and highly nutritious. It is exciting and extremely positive that we can educate youngsters as to the benefits
of properly prepared game meat by focusing on the requirements of the national curriculum.
“We are hoping that the game industry will support us and that local shoots will donate dressed pheasants to their local schools.”
Roasted hen pheasant & game chips by Tim Maddams
Roasted hen pheasant and game chips Ingredients 1 whole, plucked and dressed hen pheasant A little pork fat or goose/duck fat…
Thousands more will taste game
If you work on a shoot and would like to help by donating game to your local schools, you can contact Taste of Game’s Annette by email to annette.woolcock@tasteofgame.org.uk for further details on how to get involved.
Louise Davies, founder of the Food Teachers Centre, explained how the project will give students the chance to work with game meat, which has been difficult up to now. “In the past, lack of ingredients prevented students from cooking game, so this programme will hopefully mean that thousands more youngsters will get to cook and taste it.
“It has a perfect fit with the new GCSE course, where students demonstrate high-level skills, such as preparing meat, and where they are expected to understand how animals are reared and prepared. It also educates them about the contribution of seasonal, local and nutritious foods to modern and traditional British cuisine.”
