There’s a lot of mystery around game…hunting it, preparing it, cooking it. It’s all a little bit impenetrable for urban dwellers like me.

Despite being essentially a city boy, I’ve cooked with game of various types for many years, but I’ve never really had much hands on experience with it, never shot or trapped anything, let alone prepared or dressed the kill.

I still haven’t shot anything, although I most certainly would (note to self: another blog post in that statement, right there!), but at least I’ve learned plenty more about handling game, thanks to a few hours in the company of David Lishman, top-notch butcher and the staff of the Ilkley Moor Vaults pub and restaurant.

David (@Butcher_Dlish on twitter) runs a staggeringly good butcher’s shop in Ilkley, with a counter packed full of some of the best meats the North has to offer.  Lishman’s pork and black pudding sausages are something to behold, and anybody who complains about not having enough time to cook needs to get hold of half a dozen or so of their steak pies for the freezer.

Lishman’s sell plenty of game, and this short course was intended as an introduction, with guidance on how to deal with it, start to finish, from plucking, through the removal of the guts, to cooking and eating it.

Now, I’ve done a few of these types of thing before, and my big complaint is that too often they’re not hands on enough.  Sure, its great watching a chef knock out a couple of easy pasta dishes, but I want to make the pasta myself.  There are no such problems on a Lishman’s event – hands on, it most certainly was.

Bloody, stinking hands, covered in feathers and various bits of pheasant gunk.

Exactly how it should be.

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It’s that time of year again….Christmas and New Year over and done with, and the miserable dreariness of January, work and general fatigue induced depression right back on top of us.

I started writing this on what’s widely regarded as the worst day of the year – the first Monday at the head of a full week in January, and it was raining, and there was too much to do and not enough people to do it.

These first couple of weeks in January always bring with them the crashing realisation that I’ve had something to drink every day since goodness knows when.  The normal discipline just got thrown out of the window, and night after night, there’d be a glass of wine or a beer.

Not much, never too much, but something, all the time.

Something.

I’ve given up booze for January, but I read today that that’s not likely to be worthwhile.  Better, they say, to moderate and introduce alcohol free days at least a couple of times a week.  Abstinence or detoxing in January does no physical good, and perhaps that’s true – and it does seem likely to be true – but for me and many people it’s not about the physical.

It’s about the psychology of it.

It’s about breaking a cycle, a pattern that, in retrospect, seemed horrifyingly easy to establish, one that needs breaking while it’s still easy to do, because once alcohol gets a grip, digs it’s talons into your mind and your body, it’s an absolute bastard to shift.

Many people simply don’t, and they die because of that.

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Leon is a fast food chain with a difference.  Firstly, the food is quite good, and secondly, it’s prepared on the basis that it should taste good and do you good at the same time.

This, Leon: Baking & Puddings, the restaurant’s third cookbook, stretches that last point to the maximum.

There are recipes in here that contain suet.

Nothing with suet in it can ever do you good, in a physical sense at least, but it’s guaranteed to taste good, so full marks on the first point.

This cookbook fits into a neat category.  It’s one of those books that get picked up a little skeptically, then put  down on one side for a week or two.  I was put off by the, well, by the whole sense of twee over-enthusiasm and homeliness of it, all quirkiness and bright colours.

In Yorkshire, in January, we don’t do bright colours.

Or enthusiasm.

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If Christmas Day brings the biggest meal of the year, it follows that Boxing Day must leave the most leftovers.

Nobody – NOBODY – gets this right.

The smallest turkey is simply too big for most average Christmas dinner tables, and the size of the bird seems to have a knock-on effect on the number of side dishes, and their size that get made to go with it.

There are people opening their fridges this morning, wondering what to do with all of that stuff, none of which looks quite as appetising as it did yesterday.

A turkey sandwich or two is an absolute must, and a Boxing Day breakfast involving a few of those cold sausages wrapped in bacon is strangely satisfying, but what of the veg?

This soup will help you dispose, sorry, re-purpose at least a kilo of assorted leftovers.  It’s Christmas dinner in a cup, with some spiciness added for good measure and to, well, make a change. More this way…