Game on a plate Freddie Innes

We know we should be eating more game but Richard Negus finds it doesn’t need to be boring when cooked by a MasterChef semi-finalist

Every cell in our body requires a supply of calories and nutrients to function. We do this through eating. But eating is an emotional activity — we woo by going out to dinner, we feast in celebration. George Bernard Shaw had it that: “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”

Freddie Innes is a man who, like the majority who shoot, clearly shares this love. He just happens to be able to express it better than most. At 26, Freddie is a young chef, yet he already boasts an impressive CV, hard-won in some of the finest professional kitchens in the UK. This passion for food started from the cradle.

His grandfather was Raymond Budgen, head keeper at the Paddockhurst estate in West Sussex. It was he who instilled the passion for, and the importance of, the raw ingredient. Mr. Budgen reared his own birds in the traditional manner and felt he held a closer affinity with his stock — nurturing them from the egg, to release pen, to cover, to game cart.

He drilled this ethos into the young Innes, not only with the game but all ingredients in a dish. “My grandfather used to get very passionate,” recalled Freddie. “He’d say, if you grow your own carrots, you put a lot of yourself into them. After you harvest them you wouldn’t just boil them up any old how because these aren’t any old carrots, these are your carrots. They deserve to be treated with the same thought as the meat on your plate.”

At 26 years old, Freddie Innes is already head chef at a renowned Kentish pub-restaurant