Sue Style, Food, Wine and Travel Writer

GAME IN ALSACE

Almost the first thing you are aware of as you approach Alsace on the Paris to Strasbourg motorway is a sign indicating the passerelle à gibier, a covered bridge suspended high above the road whose purpose is to allow roe deer and wild boar to trot across in safety.

History doesn’t relate if a solitary marksman is patiently waiting on the other side in his high seat. But the scene is set, and the seed is sown of the idea that game may well be on the menu at journey’s end. In your mind’s eye is the typical Alsatian inn, half-timbered, cosily lit. From the kitchen come tantalising smells of rich venison stews, dishes of red cabbage and robust red wines.

Alsace is one of France’s most intensely game-rich regions. The fact that shooting here has been strictly regulated along German lines for over a century is frequently cited as the main reason for this happy state of affairs.

Permits are granted to individuals (rather than to guns) following a strict written and practical exam; there’s a clear emphasis on culling and conservation. Shoots are owned by the village (less often privately) and let to syndicates on nine-year leases, the latter being bid for at auction.

The Vosges are well stocked with wild boar (marcassin when young, sanglier if older), roe and red deer (chevreuil, cerf). The fertile plains and the watery marshlands of the Ill and the Rhine are home to pheasant, partridge, the occasional snipe and steadily diminishing numbers of hares.

At the Cheval Blanc at Lembach on the edge of the Parc Régional des Vosges du Nord, chef Fernand Mischler is rightly renowned for his game dishes. Here in the great baronial dining room where a log fire crackles and burns, there’s a choice of venison medallions with an intense, piquant sauce based on raspberries, black- and redcurrants, blackberries, sour cherries and raw beetroot sharpened with Dijon mustard, or breast of wild duck with grapes, the legs braised in marc de gewurztraminer. The excellent Alsace tradition of partnering pheasant with choucroute is also honoured here.

For those desperate for ideas on how to deal with yet another pile of pheasants at the back door, Monsieur Mischler and the kitchen brigade give lively two-day courses in game cooking in the restaurant kitchens. Pupils include keen amateur cooks, semi-professionals and the occasional shooting widow. On the course I attended, one student was a lady who had done herself untold damage by plunging backwards with her rifle from the ladder of a high seat, and who had decided to opt for the relative safety of the kitchen.

Not far away in Marlenheim is the aptly named Hostellerie du Cerf (‘The Stag Hotel’). This quintessential, family-run, Alsace inn specialises in the winter months in a number of exquisite game dishes. Besides the classic, inkily-sauced lièvre à la royale there are newer creations such as a saddle of hare with a quince purée, tiny cabbage parcels of choucroute and spätzle - squiggles of gnocchi-like pasta which are essential to any well dressed game dish in the Rhine lands. Another novelty this season consists of medallions of succulent young red deer with a superb sauce based on redcurrants with a shot of horseradish.

Further south are a couple of rising stars who are doing fine things with game. At the Hostellerie Paulus in Landser near Mulhouse, chef Hervé Paulus has devised a dish consisting of saddle of venison with three variations on the pumpkin theme: ‘crisps’, purée and a sauce, as well as a near-irresistible warm partridge pâté, redolent with truffles, and served with crunchy green cabbage and trompettes de la mort (horns of plenty).

Down in the Sundgau, the southernmost part of Alsace, chef Emanuel Lambelin (formerly of the Buerehiesel in Strasbourg) is well into the saddle at the Ancienne Forge in Hagenthal close to Basel. Proceedings open with a sparkling, jellied terrine of poached pheasant and foie gras garnished with various preserves put up by the chef at the beginning of the season (mountain cranberries, pickled mushrooms, chestnuts, figs and walnuts).

Main courses include an original presentation of roast wild duck: the legs are boned and made into fleischschnacka, a typically Alsatian garnish consisting (here) of a game-based stuffing rolled up, snail-style (Schnacka), in fine pasta. The breast is pinkly roasted, a rich sauce is made with the bones and the whole is served with red cabbage. Or you could try the house version of lièvre à la royale for which the saddle and thighs of hare are boned out and marinated for a day, a farce is made from the remaining meat and enriched with foie gras and truffles, the whole is assembled into a bolster, rolled up and gently poached for fully four hours.