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The life of the partridge that ends up on the plate, pickled or accompanied by lentils, has changed a lot in recent decades. The fields it used to inhabit, full of bushes to shelter in, and the streams where it used to go to quench its thirst, have been radically modified by human action. Hunting has lost its natural balance and is going through a difficult time; small game species are declining drastically and dominant agricultural practices, hunting tourism, human intervention and rigid legislation are making it increasingly difficult to find wild game on the market. On the other side of the scale, deer, roe deer and wild boar raid roads, abuse crops and move into cities, causing problems of coexistence with humans. Two different realities that can be told through two restaurants.
Lera, the restaurant distinguished with two Michelin stars, one of them green, is located in Castroverde de Campos, a village that belongs to Zamora, but is the same distance from this capital as it is from Valladolid. In this municipality there are no large masses of vegetation, it is what they call Tierra de Campos and this is fundamental, because the landscape defines the fauna. Small game hunting is practised here because large mammals have nowhere to shelter. And smaller animals are finding it increasingly difficult.
The voracious agricultural practices of this region, which lives off the crops, seek greater profitability in the countryside, often ignoring what this entails, and have ended up dismantling the natural course of things. The use of armoured seeds [grains treated with pesticides] or the burning of brambles and other bushes, which do not generate money but serve as a refuge and home for rabbits, hares and partridges, are endangering the continuity of wild game. Luis Alberto Lera, who has been hunting for 38 years and has seen the landscape change by leaps and bounds as a result of extremely aggressive agriculture, is well aware of this. Where once the land was ploughed “with two-metre tractors, now it is ploughed with fifteen-metre tractors at a speed of around 30 km/h”.
The chef also points to agriculture as the cause of certain attacks on the aquifers. Of the streams that used to run through the lands of Castroverde de Campos, Lera has noticed the disappearance of two of them, not because of water abuse, but because they are covered with earth to increase the surface area for cultivation. This means leaving part of the fauna without access to water. This problematic coexistence between man and beast is exemplified very well by the red-legged partridge, a species of great hunting and gastronomic value and perhaps one of the best known birds in game cooking. Partridges nest in cereal fields, as their habitats have been modified, which poses a real danger to their survival. The time that elapses between the cereal reaching an optimum height for the partridge to nest and the harvest is becoming shorter and shorter, turning these fields into ecological traps.
If we take away the alternative of nesting on the boundaries by means of practices such as those described by Lera (abuse of herbicides, uncontrolled burning of vegetation, etc.), the partridges have no choice but to breed in the crops themselves, which leads to a significant reduction in breeding success. In addition, the armoured seeds ingested by the partridges – which contain a coating of pesticides and fungicides – compromise the birds’ health and reproduction.
Despite the fact that the number of hunters in our country has fallen, the growing hunting tourism demands game throughout the season, which is why farm-bred birds are often used to artificially repopulate the hunting grounds so that they can continue with their activity. This practice, which has been defended as part of the restocking of game reserves, at first sight seems to make sense, but it ceases to make sense when the release takes place just hours before the hunt, becoming what is known as “pot hunting” or “plastic hunting”. Once the activity is over, the game that is not used for home consumption is taken to the hunting centre, where it is certified for consumption and sale. The point is that in these centres no distinction is made between wild meat and meat that has been reared on a farm, and organoleptically there is a gulf between the two. “If you have hunted all your life you notice it immediately; even when they are skinned you can see the difference in the legs and the colour of the meat. You can tell quickly, even by the smell. When you catch a partridge from here, it has a powerful smell that takes you back to the mountains”, says Lera, who sees the future of the partridge and the wild hare as uncertain.
So much so that he confesses to having doubts about how long his restaurant will remain open due to the farm game: “I know that I will cook and sell a partridge from the poultry farm well, but for me it doesn’t mean the same thing”. For the Zamorano, the best partridge is the dry one. That which has hard muscle and little fat and has interesting aromas in prolonged cooking, as opposed to the new or released specimens, which are similar to turkey due to their much softer texture and a pinkish colour which is far removed from that of a wild bird which has had to flee from foxes and other predators since birth and which makes it a unique piece for the delight of the chef and his diners.
Luis Alberto Lera also notes a fundamental difference between the partridges of the two Castillas and assures that he can distinguish them, because those from Zamora, he says, have “had a hard time” since birth, while those from Castilla-La Mancha have feeders, predators are very controlled and the preserves are better looked after. There is also much more release of animals, which may make it easier to distinguish them. It is precisely there, in Castilla-La Mancha, where young talent is emerging and it is easy to find hunting proposals among the new tasting menus awarded by the red guide. Oba, Ancestral or Ababol have different dishes made with wild proteins as a way to reconnect with the roots, something that, however, does not seem to be happening in Castilla y León, which suffers from a certain lack of identity among the new generations.
How does the hunting get to the restaurant?
Although the law allows game to be consumed on its own, it must pass through a specialised centre where it is certified for consumption and can be served in a restaurant. Once the animals have been killed, those in charge of the hunting trips must notify the hunting centres so that they can collect the eviscerated game with refrigerated vans that maintain a temperature that avoids the proliferation of microorganisms. Once at the hunting centre, the traceability process begins, by separating and numbering the pieces and their red viscera, which an official veterinarian from the relevant autonomous community will analyse for diseases that can affect humans, such as trichinosis in wild boar.
Once the meat has been approved and the dirty parts have been removed, it is quartered according to the demands of the hunter or the cook who bought it. If the meat is not to be served within a few days, it must be frozen, as the shelf life of wild game is much longer than that of other types of livestock. This often results in game from abattoirs and dealers being subjected to a deep-freezing process to ensure its durability. It also carries a higher carbon footprint, due to the transport to these centres and then to restaurants, which calls into question the sustainability of game that is often sold under the promise of “farm to table”.
One of these centres is the Murieta Hunting Centre, where Edorta Lamo, the chef at the helm of Arrea!, one of the most attractive proposals of recent years, which continues to surprise with its frankness and congruence, supplies game meat and gives advice on how to handle it. The chef from Alava prides himself on the fact that he does not know of any restaurant that supplies its meat and produce from less than twenty kilometres away, something that is possible in Campezo. Although at first Arantxa and Patxi Biurrun, at the head of the centre, did not cut up the cattle, the chef’s insistence led them to do so. As a result of this union, they came up with creations that were impossible, such as jamón de jabalina, which comes from the females that have grazed among cereals and which has become a classic at Arrea!
If Lera is the cook-hunter par excellence, Edorta declares that he has never practised this activity: “I am not a lover of guns, but I am a lover of poaching culture”. Unlike other places where they are shot, the pigeons in Santa Cruz de Campezo are captured by signal. “They were hunted in a different way, it was more romantic. In a way, this [his restaurant] helps to ensure that these traditions don’t disappear. The pigeons hunted on the wing have meant that the birds no longer pass through here. Signal hunting is more astute and much more environmentally friendly. You value the prey a lot”, defends Edorta, while he recalls that in the past, when flocks of pigeons approached the area, the villagers would repeat: “Here comes the meat”. A phrase that sums up very well the austerity of the Alavese mountains and which Arrea! tries to express.
In the municipality of Campezo the only small game found is woodcock and pigeon. There are no rabbits, hares or partridges because there are no large sown plains. It has always been a difficult area for cultivation, which has meant that its landscape has not been altered. “It is an unknown area, it is very deep in Navarre and geographically it was not interesting. That is why it has been preserved very unspoilt. That’s the good thing about having been ignored for so long”, says Lamo himself. Thanks to this abandonment, it has been possible to preserve some species of fruit that are not so profitable because they are not very productive, but which are of great gastronomic value, such as the winter pear or the apple moceta. What does abound in Campezo are the wild boars, which are becoming more and more numerous. There are many complaints from rural areas for the control of these animals, which have become a plague and damage crops. Wild boars are the hunting species that has generated most controversy in recent years, due to their repeated encounters with humans in environments where they have not lived until now: cities. Unlike deer, wild boar can breed more than once a year and their litters are much larger.
In the case of villages, where these animals often coexist with extensive livestock, they cause other problems such as the possibility of transferring diseases to humans. These animals have lost their fear of humans and have mixed with other domestic pigs, generating new hybrids. The disappearance of their main predator, the Iberian wolf, and a greater availability of food in urban areas have favoured the proliferation of these intelligent, omnivorous and super-adaptive animals, which are also pushing out other wild species. Against this backdrop, hunting them seems the most sensible option and eating them the most coherent.
In Arrea!, where hunting is defended as an ecological act, the wild boar not only looks like a banner on the door, it is also a protagonist at the table in the form of pastrami, heart skewered on a rib, tongue wrapped in chard from the garden or stewed shank. Crossbreeding and greater access to food have changed the morphology of the wild boar, to some extent benefiting its gastronomic uses. According to Edorta Lamo, it used to be unthinkable to remove the cheeks from a wild boar because its jaw was not like that of pigs, but now it is possible.
“It is clear that there is a tendency to look a little bit to the land and to preserve cultures. This recourse to the ancestral. It is very positive that hunting is used, but it must be consistent. It doesn’t make much sense to put game on the menu and the game comes from somewhere else.
The chef himself recalls with regret having worked in Spanish kitchens with German-labelled wild boar. Luis Alberto Lera and Edorta Lamo are two of the many chefs working to strip hunting of the prejudices associated with a meat that is not so different from extensive grazing, now in fashion for animal welfare and for being healthier, and which also has points in common with the palatability of the Iberian pig and other sensory characteristics related to acorns, a food for which deer, wild boar and fallow deer have a weakness.
This is how Edorta sums it up: “People need to be made aware of nutritional levels. Everything goes through technique and now there has been a lot of evolution in this aspect. We have to unlearn, disseminate and teach. Unlearning those beliefs that game has to be marinated a lot in an acid medium, or that they are very tough meats that can only be stewed. Now that we know so much and that technical advances have been made in the kitchen, we have to take advantage of this to teach other ways of treating it”.
This resurgence of game in haute cuisine is an opportunity to get rid of preconceived ideas and defend the goodness of a meat with excellent nutritional values, low in fat and with optimal amounts of vitamins and minerals.