Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts

Author:Alex Watts
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2013-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

We hung the pheasants in pairs from nails in the dry store. We were told to keep the door shut so customers walking down the hill from the car park couldn’t see them. But sometimes we forgot, and when they did see them, they were delighted.

They would stop and ask questions about how long they should hang for, where the pheasants were shot, and the best way to cook them. I was no expert, far from it, but it didn’t stop me going into great detail.

Evidently, the world was full of foodies, who’d like nothing more than to give it all up and run a country restaurant. I wondered how quickly the lacquer would peel once they realised how much work was involved. But they were obviously passionate about cooking and fancied themselves in the kitchen.

Some would even try to press recipes on me, and I’d nod sagely before trumping them with another. Most were made up on the spot. I sometimes wonder whether there are manor houses in Cornwall serving pheasant a la quince.

The birds would arrive in the back of a Toyota pick-up truck. The poacher would tap on the kitchen window and bellow: “I’s got another 50 pheasants for you!” In return, he and his mother and wife, who were probably the same person, would get a free meal in the restaurant.

We called him “Eyes Got” because he began each sentence with “I’s got”. Only Jules was pleased to see him. The rest of us cursed the pie-faced toad under our breath.

After they’d been hanging for a week in the dry store, we’d pluck them. Kolfinna was too squeamish, and would scream “no way!” whenever we asked her to help, and Jim was far too slow, so it was down to me and Marcus as the two other commis.

We would dress from head to toe in black bin liners, ripping the plastic for arm and leg holes. And then, like two forensic scientists who’d fallen into a bucket of tar, we’d begin the bloodshed. After 20 or so, the smell got sickening, and we had to keep the door shut throughout in case we were spotted by customers. It wouldn’t have been the best appetite-booster to see us covered in guts, corn and feathers.

Plucking would have taken hours, so we skinned them instead. Jules would only roll up the breasts in ballotines, and confit the legs in duck fat, so it didn’t matter whether we lost the skin. One of us would do the chopping, balancing a plastic board on our knees and hacking the carcasses with a machete, as we sat on two plastic boxes next to a growing pile of gore.

First the feet would go, and then the head. The chopper’s “wing man” would then rip open the plumage on the neck, remove the cluster of yellow seeds in the craw, and then tear the skin from the breast, and pull the legs through. We would be left with a purple-blue carcass with red marks where the shot had gone in.

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