Meat, Game & Poultry

For these recipes, you should consider making friends with your local organic butcher. There’s really no comparison between free-range meat and the factory-produced variety, in either taste or quality. In rural French markets of the south-west, dominated as they are by speciality farmers, most meat is free-range and organic, and locals will usually point you in the direction of the best producers.

Because of the regional nature of this cookbook, you’ll find that there is a greater than usual number of recipes involving game birds and poultry – pigeon, pheasant, goose and, most especially, duck. These are freely available in French markets of the southwest, and can be found at specialist butchers in Britain. Ducks and geese in France are most commonly sold as follows: