Some things are best homemade. Sometimes, even with no expertise, it's next to impossible to make a worse job of something than the very best, most expensive versions available in the shops. Eggs are probably the best example. There is no hen's egg commercially available at any price that would be anything like as good as a homemade one. Maybe they are perkier because they are fresher. Maybe they are tastier because household chickens tend to have a more varied diet of scraps and leftovers that would be prohibited commercially.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains: eggs from the back garden are in a completely different league from the rest.
Of course most people don't have the time or inclination to get involved with chickens. And whatever their shortcomings, shops do make everything wonderfully easy. In fact, at the other end of the egg, the bird end of things, shops are hard to beat.
I'm thinking particularly about game birds. I spent a day on a grouse moor last week. And it's hard to recall anywhere quite so beautiful. A heathery wilderness it was, somewhere else altogether. When I think of the ugly places that chickens live, even the most expensive ones, it's enough to make me never want to eat anything but game birds. Pheasant and partridge can be good, but grouse is the best.
Grouse are completely wild – they differ from the majority of game birds in this respect. Partridge and pheasant, for example, have to be bred in captivity and then released. Grouse only live wild on grouse moors. By coincidence, the neighbouring moor had just come on the market. Fair to say, it was 12,000 acres, about 20 square miles – a fair chunk of land – but it was expected to fetch around £20m.
Grouse is absolutely delicious, but you can't even start to think about producing your own unless you've got £20m – and that's only a down payment. The moorland has to be managed expertly all year round so that the birds can thrive. But the real expense comes in the dispatching. Whereas a chicken is killed by a machine or someone paid close to minimum wage, you can be sure that any grouse you buy has been shot by someone very rich, who has not only taken a couple of days off work to indulge a passion, but has paid a fortune for the privilege. The clothes and the guns, too are fantastically expensive. And grouse shooting is quite a risky business. They fly low and often sweep through the line of guns. My hostess was shot in the face last year.
People who own grouse moors tend to be fanatical about them and run them at a loss, but nonetheless whoever has taken the day's shooting will be charged around £80 for each bird shot. The fact that you can buy an oven-ready grouse in the shops for around £5 is a source of great wonder to me. The fact that a lot of them are exported to France because there isn't much of a market for them here is a source of incredulity. Buying grouse in the shops is probably one of the all-time great bargains. How can something that lives on a £20m estate devoted entirely to its wellbeing, something that the world's busiest people pay a fortune to risk their necks to bring to our tables, cost less than a bucket of chicken nuggets? Beats me. OFM
