Having thoroughly enjoyed the first instalment of What to Eat Now for all the wrong reasons, I naturally had to sit in on the second episode of Valentine Warner’s ongoing quest to turn us onto the autumnal bounty all around us. And since Harry Hill doesn’t seem to be around to make fun of him, it will have be left to me to have a good laugh at his expense.
First up in this episode, our intrepid hero promises to do “bad things” to crayfish with butter- a rather worrying turn of phrase, but not the worst the episode has to offer. After hugging a tree (literally!) and explaining how much he loves gathering watercress and fighting squirrels for delicious hazelnuts, Valentine gets down to the business of catching some American crayfish- big burly invaders who have taken over the turf of the endangered UK crayfish. Don’t go out catching your own just yet, however- apparently you need a licence in order to do so.
His ingredients gathered with a familiarity that suggests years of living off the land (not always through choice), Valentine begins preparing the crayfish in his kitchen. The actual meal doesn’t look too bad, but once again our host manages to inject his own brand of unintentional hilarity by explaining how he hears the voices of the ingredients imploring him not to leave them behind on the chopping board. Personally, that’s not something I’d want to admit to on national television, but each to their own.
A fan of the autumn berries that may have sustained him through the long winter nights when his public school classmates locked him out of the dorms, Valentine decides to go brambling with the WI, using cheap underhanded tactics of running off to get a head start on the important business of blackberry picking. They are collecting said berries for a dessert competition, and in this dog-eat-dog world, anything goes, with threats such as “if you put fairy liquid in my mixture…I’ll change your timer settings” flying back and forth. Clearly, this is not an arena for amateurs to enter.
Still, Valentine himself is not one to shirk a challenge, and so he decides to prepare a bramble jelly rabbit for the competition, noting that “bouncing bunnies have always brought me luck”- a most disturbing remark if ever there was one. Unfortunately, his bunny doesn’t set properly and collapses across the plate, earning him third place in the competition for flavour rather than appearance.
Finally, Valentine turns his attention back to shooting, this time using the very shotguns he eschewed last week to take down some wood pigeons. Accompanying him on the hunt is a woman who has only ever shot clay pigeons- can she be converted to the dark side by Valentine’s sheer enthusiasm? Perhaps, but first they have to actually get the birds to come to them- and since pigeons are naturally wary, they must lull them into a false sense of security by setting up a hide and putting out some plastic decoy pigeons. Imagine how stupid those birds must feel as they swoop down to chat up what appears to be a good-looking bird, only to realise they’ve just been flirting with a plastic model!
As it turns out, our clay pigeon shooter is completely unable to hit anything, leaving Valentine to prove his skills as he brings down some real pigeons for supper. Nonetheless, he’s managed to instil that all important taste for blood in her, cooking up a pigeon meal that will have her hankering to bag a few birds of her own.
Next week: “ the cow’s got a direct link through its horn to the cosmos”. I can’t wait to write about that one.
