Sound moderators: what you need to know
We answer some of your questions on the changes to the law around sound moderators.
What’s cooking at the BASC Wild Food Kitchen Theatre
The BASC Wild Food Kitchen Theatre, sponsored by Global Knives and Lincolnshire Game, returns to The Game Fair this July with three days of live cookery from some of the country’s best-known chefs and a menu built entirely around sustainable, wild British game.
Running across all three days of The Game Fair at Ragley Hall, the theatre gives visitors the chance to watch top chefs cook live, share tips and tricks and put pheasant, venison, rabbit, woodpigeon, hare, wild boar, goose and trout firmly at the centre of the plate.
Game is one of the most sustainable, traceable and delicious foods Britain has to offer, and the chefs taking to the stage all know it inside out.
A line-up of star names
Topping the bill is world-famous celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, the original culinary bad boy and Britain’s youngest ever holder of three Michelin stars, who kicks off the weekend on Friday with a masterclass risotto built around a rich ragu of rabbit offal.
Chef Marco’s joined across the weekend by a host of familiar faces from television and the world of game cookery, including Escape to the Chateau’s Dick and Angel Strawbridge, Shed and Buried presenter Henry Cole, and renowned mixologist and First Dates bartender Merlin Griffiths, who will be shaking up summer cocktails and dinner-party canapés each day.
Eat Game Awards Chef of the Year Callum Leslie, executive chef of the Michelin-starred Black Swan at Oldstead, brings his fine-dining pedigree to a Yorkshire hare masterclass, while farmer’s daughter and Wild Food Ambassador Rachel Green returns with her trademark no-fuss approach to cooking from the land.
José Souto, one of the UK’s foremost authorities on venison and sustainable sourcing, will take visitors through the full story of a roe buck, from field to fork, and later guide guests through all six of Britain’s wild deer species in one sitting.
Elsewhere in the programme, Cai ap Bryn of Game and Flames brings live-fire cooking and street-food flavours to partridge and muntjac, while Chris Marney of Game for Anything – named Best Game Educator at this year’s Eat Game Awards – serves up venison kebabs and Korean-style rabbit. Mark Lloyd of Nottingham’s 8 Plates pop-up turns his hand to trout and woodpigeon, Michelin-starred Mark Kempson cooks wild mallard, and clinical nutritionist Eva Humphries shows that wild venison can be a nutritional powerhouse as well as a delicious one.
Something for every appetite
The dishes on the schedule range from elegant fine dining to the kind of recipes you could happily cook at home after a day in the field. Visitors can expect everything from a peanut butter pheasant curry and a venison doner kebab through to woodpigeon eggs Benedict, rabbit with cider and mustard dumplings and a McPheasant burger built for a shoot day breakfast.
Each demonstration runs for around 40 minutes, with the chefs sharing techniques, ingredient know-how and plenty of practical tips that visitors can take home and try themselves. Knife care gets its moment too, with the GLOBAL Knives team demonstrating how to keep blades razor sharp on a wet stone each morning before the cooking begins.
Provenance and sustainability at the heart of it all
Beyond the entertainment, the Wild Food Kitchen Theatre exists to do exactly what its name suggests: get people thinking about where their food comes from. Every chef on the bill shoots, fishes or forages and their dishes are a showcase for wild, sustainable produce sourced directly from the British countryside.
It’s this combination of star power and substance that makes the theatre such a highlight of The Game Fair each year – a chance to be entertained, to pick up new recipes and skills and to come away with a better understanding of why game deserves a regular place on the menu.
Plan your visit
The Wild Food Kitchen Theatre runs throughout the weekend at The Game Fair, 24–26 July at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire, with a full timetable of demonstrations available on The Game Fair website. It sits alongside BASC’s wider presence at the show this year, featuring an all-new BASC Dome alongside the usual coaching on The Shoot Line, target practice on the Airgun Line and the ever-popular Have-A-Go Scurries.
BASC members receive complimentary entry to The Game Fair across all three days. Book your tickets here.
Â
Share
EU lead ammunition restriction proposals revised
EU Member States have agreed to drop a ban on lead bullets and introduce a 7-year transition period before lead shot restrictions take effect in the EU and Northern Ireland.
BASC urges caution over implementation of revised Muirburn Code
BASC Scotland is urging caution over the implementation of NatureScot’s revised Muirburn Code, warning that several mandatory elements are impractical for practitioners, despite repeated concerns being raised throughout its development. While BASC fully supports the objective of muirburn being undertaken safely and appropriately, we are concerned that aspects of the final Code do not fully reflect