You dress the birds by skinning them or leave the skin on?.
A very good question. Depends on school of cooking and the cuisine, the species and the last, but not the least the condition of the bird.
First we have to understand why leave the skin on in the first place. The answer is flavour.
Some species taste better with the skin others dont. However this can be subjective. For eg. when i was in south India, it was common to have chicken cooked with the skin on but in the north, highly unusual.
For goat, skin is never left on but when cooking 'siri' or 'paya', it is.
Pork is commonly eaten with the skin on; beef isnt.
The rule fo thumb is (heard it from both Indian khansamas and also Western chefs) (for the birds),
if there is fat, leave the skin on, else let it be.
Many people dont follow this and leave it on regardless of the amount of fat on the body.
Some birds like partridges dont have fat anyways but winter geese do (mostly).
The preferred method is that if there is no fat, remove the skin and wrap the bird in streaky bacon.
The bacon provides both fat and flavour.
In western cooking, game birds are usually roasted and are also hung to improve the flavour (in india we call it 'high' and not highly tasty.
The skin and fat act as a barrier for the moisture to escape and keep the meat moist and succulent. So does the bacon.
Indian cooking, on the other hand is more masala flavour oriented and hence leaving it on or off doesnt need to be dependent on the fat content nor does it affect the taste greatly.
I discard the skin on the phesant (hope none of my shooting buddies are reading this). In teal i keep it on. Discard in partridges. Keep it on in duck, depends on the fat in geese.
My last phesant of the season was so ladeninfat, it was unbelievable. It wasnt possible to see the flesh. Too bad i had already discardedthe skin. In waterfowl, one expects to have fat so I always check before skinning them; but who ever heard of a phesant with soooo much fat so i never checked. Maybe in the next season i will.
If the skin is off, i cooked bhoona meat else some western/continental cooking.
-- 09 Jun 2010, 13:23 --
We do almost exclusively "walk-up" hunting in the US, but of course we have a lot more land here. The whole of the UK is smaller than a medium sized state.
In the decadent Edwardian era, the way of hunting/ quarry was divided by class.
Roaylty and nobility hunted grouse/ Commoners hunted pigeon. (Itwasnt the law but common practice).
Similarly, driven shoots were for the aristocracy and walked up for the commoners. In those days British empire was huge and they had a lot of land.
For eg imagine one 'country that included Burma, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Even in India they did driven shoots mostly.
Driven shoots in those days were more of social events and were very formal. A social standing of a man was determined a lot by his ability to handle a gun.
AfterWW1, in caqsh strapped Britain, a lot of big estates were broken down and sold/leased.
a lot of people started forming syndicates. There was an article in a magazine in those days which stated (with disdain) that anyone with a gun and a couple of hundred pounds could now shoot.
These people also wanted to shoot like aristocracy. And hence driven shooting still being a part of culture here. It is still considered more of a social event. Starts with a drink first thing in the morning, formal dress, etiquette, toasts etc.
You will notice in my syndicate they arent very formal but elsewhere they might be.
These gora sahibs, would shoot everything driven, even tigers. Sit in one place, let others sweat it out and you have gunbearers, loaders and just do the shooting.
However this heavy volume of shooting produced some exceptional shooters. Since these were almost aristocracy, they never answered to the challanges posed by the visiting american sharpshooters, or entered competitions.
Lord Walsingham, Marquess of Ripon, Prince Duleep Singh; All experts concede they were the best three shots in the world; the only argument is the order.
Just to give you some idea, the 6th marquess of Ripon, Thomas de Grey once had 7 dead phesants in the air at the same time from 7 different shots!! And this with SxS.
