Our £2 pheasant feast

Our best buy at the Dartmouth farmers’ market we shopped at on Saturday morning was two trays of pheasant legs at £2 each. (£2 a tray, not £2 a leg!) From a real farmer which, it has to be said, is unusual at farmers’ markets these days.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting more and more disillusioned with them. Most seem to be full of stalls offering overpriced cupcakes and chutneys. Very few offer genuinely local food. And why is it that the only cooked food being produced seems to be burgers and sausages? Surely someone has the wit and imagination to produce something a little different - like the raclette I wrote about on my cheese blog the other day.

Anyway, I digress. My husband being a much better game cook than me was in charge of the pheasant and produced a fantastic stew with a few onions, a lot of red wine, a dash of sweet sherry and an extraordinary concoction of spices which included (I pressed him to remember) cumin, coriander, sweet pimenton, thyme, oregano, bayleaf and cloves. Which I suppose makes this dish not quite as frugal as heralded and why, being more of a realist, I’m the cookery writer and not him. (It’s a very male way to cook ;-)

My contribution to the proceedings was some braised carrots (3 from a kilo bag from Tesco which cost only 45p) and some sprouts from the farmers’ market (about 45p worth) which I stir-fried with a splash of light soy sauce, some water and a few drops of sesame oil (OK, I admit that was a bit of an indulgence too) Total cost, provided you’ve got a well-stocked store cupboard and some leftover booze, £1.50 a head. Not bad for a slap-up Sunday night supper.