Young game chef wins contest

Selected from dozens of top quality game dishes prepared by young people all over the country, Ellie Phillips won the inaugural Game Chef Hunt with a pheasant dish the judges deemed ‘extraordinary’.

Run by British Game Alliance (BGA), supported by some of the top names in game shooting and judged by Rachel Carrie, Mike Robinson and Liam Stokes, the Game Chef Hunt unearthed some genuine culinary talent.

Inspired by the plight of home-schooling parents and young people stuck at home during lockdown, the BGA organised a cooking competition throughout January and early February.

Anyone aged 21 and under could enter, sharing a game dish they had cooked themselves. With prizes on offer from Fieldsports Journal, Schoffel, Pressendye, Dylan Williams and Rachel Carrie, everyone expected the competition to be fierce. Yet the quality and calibre of the entries defied even those high expectations.

Winner Ellie beats at Dallowgill, a BGA member shoot keepered by Will Watson. While it was her pheasant salad that secured top honours, the judges were also amazed by her Chinese banquet of pheasant chow mein, venison in black bean sauce and pheasant satay bao buns.

Ellie said: “ I definitely have a new appreciation to eating game and have really enjoyed coming up with different recipes that promote the use of such a tasty, sustainable and under-appreciated source of protein.”

In second place came Harry Jakubowski-Birch. Harry stalked a roebuck with gamekeeper Sid Vincent and prepared it into a beautifully-presented venison rack with chocolate espresso sauce, charred tender stem broccoli and dirty mash potato garnished with autumn blackberries and butter fried pears.

The judges were torn over third place, until Mike rescued them from their indecision by offering a spectacular fourth prize of a meal at either The Elder or The Woodsman.

So third prize went to Finley Kwiecien-Scully, who at 9-years-old prepared a Polish spicy venison stew that stood out among the entries as a colourful example of a cuisine that uses a lot of game but is not often featured in game cookery here in the UK.

The specially created fourth prize was given to Tilly Brooker, the youngest entrant aged just 8. Tilly cooked pan-fried orange duck breast on a duck fat potato rosti. The ducks were shot whilst she was out with her family on their local syndicate shoot, where Tilly follows enthusiastically in the footsteps of both parents, shooting pheasants and ducks with her daddy and shooting a camera with her mummy.