Cormorant - not my flavour of the month

MY ELDERLY cousin rang to ask if I had a recipe for cormorant. He was going to the west coast to shoot woodcock. Last time he went shooting woodcock in Skye it had been too early. The weather in Scandanavia had been too mild to precipitate the annual migration south. For some reason, as he tells it, the party fell to talking about eating cormorants. I gathered this discussion was largely cheerful banter and bad jokes over the Burgundy rather than serious culinary debate.

So this time he wanted to go back armed with a real recipe. I could find only one serious-sounding suggestion which was to take off the breasts and wrap chunks of the meat in bacon and cook - somehow or other - in milk.

The other recipe which excited me but which I began to smell a rat about came from Willie Fowler, a one-time Spitfire pilot who in 1965 published Countryman's Cooking, which is a glorious paean to political incorrectness.

Fowler was adept at pies but no good at the pastry. He was, however, hugely attractive to women, or so his wife said. "Having fortified your pastry-maker with a couple of stiff gins, let her loose with some flour, lard, a bowl and a rolling pin. Don't kiss her till she has carried out her duties; you will find the situation gets completely out of hand and you end up hours later with no gin and no lid on your pie."

His cormorant recipe is suspiciously like that for capercaillie, but rather more exotic in the construction. "Having shot your cormorant, hold it well away from you as you carry it home; these birds are exceedingly verminous and the lice are said to be not entirely host-specific. Hang up by the feet with a piece of wire, soak in petrol and set on fire. This treatment both removes most of the feathers and kills the lice."

Take the cormorant down, he continues, and cut off the beak. Send this to the local Conservancy Board who, if you are in the right area, will give you 3/6d or sometimes 5/- for it. Bury the carcass and leave it there for a fortnight. This is said to improve the flavour by removing, in part at least, the taste of rotting fish. Dig up and skin and draw the bird. Place in a strong salt and water solution and soak for 48 hours. Remove, dry, stuff with whole, unpeeled onions. Simmer gently in seawater, to which two tablespoons of chloride of lime has been added, for six hours. This has a further tenderising effect. Take out of the water and allow to dry, meanwhile mixing up a stiff paste of methylated spirit and curry powder. Spread this mixture liberally over the breast of the bird. Finally roast for three hours. The result is unbelievable. Not even a starving vulture would eat it.

Nowdays cormorants are protected, not that there is a noticeable shortage on most rivers.

You will recall the Western Isles counterpart to the swan-loving Orkney composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Nabbed with his knife and fork poised over the braised breasts of a brace of hen harriers the felon was duly hauled before the sheriff and sent on his way with the sort of fine the RSPB always complain is too lenient. Emerging from the back of the courthouse for lunch the sheriff found himself going the same way as the offending bird-eater and out of curiosity asked him what a hen harrier tasted like. He replied: "Somewhere between a golden eagle and an osprey - your honour."