Bird flu has a lot to answer for. Apparently, according to some US news sites, us Brits will be paying up to $200 for a fresh, free range turkey this year. I’m not so sure; my in-laws are buying our crop this year so I haven’t dragged myself down to the butchers to find out but one thing I do know is that this story has received much more coverage in the US than it has in the UK. Indeed, press here don’t seem to have bothered with it at all.

Ironically, I suspect that this might be a bit of a bonus for beef farmers as the good old British public don’t seem to demand free range cows in the same way that they do with our feathered friends. But let’s not forget BSE, Bluetongue and a whole host of other diseases that we’ve never heard of that will probably rear their ugly heads in the near future to decimate our cattle population.

One suspects that there is a certain amount of ‘media hype’ propagating these fears. I mean, I’ve never stopped eating beef, the rarer the better. I’m even one of those odd people that enjoys steak tartare and have I ever contracted BSE? No. At least I don’t think so.

And bird flu? That never bothered me. I mean, I’m a bloke so why should I worry? Joking aside, bird flu is about as frightening as SARS; the least scary ‘world ender’ that I’ve ever come across – cough.

Ok, so my views are probably very poorly researched and I don’t expect you all to share them. But life is about risks and I really don’t want to spend all of my time checking that the bit of cow sitting on my plate once had a passport stamped on its ass. The government pay huge sums of money employing people to persecute our farmers in order to make this type of thing safe for us. I know this might seem a little naive but who do you know that died of Bird Flu? Or Bluetongue? Or BSE? Compare that to the people you know who have died of heart disease brought about by the cholesterol that they ingest. Seriously though, in my opinion, eating a 3 course meal at a decent restaurant washed down with a few glasses of vino colapso is far more dangerous to your health than BSE.

So my suggestion for Christmas this year is find a butcher that’ll prepare you a Quintet. The Quintet is taking America by storm and is probably the first foodstuff from our ‘friends across the pond’ that I would recommend.

Packed with four different types of birds wrapped inside each other, the Quintet has become the thing to carve this year.

At nearly 9kg, it is three times heavier than normal oven-ready birds, leaving its supermarket friends looking like mere featherweights.

With a $250 price tag for the roasted version, the decadent offering is a little more expensive that our Christmas turkey, but it is a spatchcock, inside a quail, inside a chicken, inside a duck! Heaven!

However, you don’t expect an American chef to come up with such a wonderful idea all by his self. Mr. Garraffa, the much quoted proponent of the culinary delight, admitted that he got the idea from British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who lovingly created a 10-layered bird. Phew.

So there you have it. Eat and be merry and have a wonderful festive period one and all.

• Steve's blog
• Add new comment