Grouse

Friday September 28

As we are fortunate enough to be in London after the Glorious Twelfth of August - grouse season - we had an envie to try this gamiest of game birds. (Okay, this year the Twelfth fell on a Sunday, so the start was a day late. So sue me.)

We are also fortunate enough to be in Islington, where Steve Hatt (fish and game monger, voted the Fourth Nicest Thing in London) purveys said bird in the appropriate season. So for a mere £9.99 each - yes, that's 20 bucks a bird - we came home with two dark-red little carcasses. That's a brace of grouses, I mean a brice of grice . . . oh, never mind. At first I wasn't sure they were grouse, as they were about the same size as the partridges we had earlier in the month, but when we opened the packages, their little legs (which had been tucked inside the cavities) had feathers all over them, down to the claws - that's why red grouse are called Lagopus scoticus, "Scottish hare-foot."

Mr. Hatt himself advised us on the cooking method: barding with bacon and roasting on a bed of potatoes at gas mark 6 for 25 minutes. But this oven is very slow, so we upped it to the maximum gas mark, chopped the golden potatoes into dice (adding diced onion and carrot for good measure) and started the vegetables (tossed with olive oil and salt) a half hour before the baconed birds went in. We also continued to roast the vedge after the birds came out and were resting under a tinfoil tent.

It all came out perfectly; the vedge was tender, the grouse still moist and very gamey, especially around the cavity area - though we'd washed them out carefully, probably throwing away what people here consider the best parts. In fact, perhaps due to the long ageing, or just the nature of the bird, grouse is very livery, which is one of the few flavors that we do not appreciate. And now that we've had it, one good grouse will probably be enough.