A thousand meals of game birds

The wild taste of duck, goose and swan cooked up in a casserole is a recipe Richmond chef Phil Hazeldine and his team have used to deliver nearly 1,000 meals to families needing a bit of help to put food on the table.

It began with an annual game bird dinner through Nelson Marlborough Fish and Game several years ago when Phil cooked up to 10 different dishes from the meat of different game birds, and it has morphed into meals gifted to charity.

As the owner of Phil’s Place at Club Waimea and a keen hunter himself, he says it is a way for hunters to provide food for people who do not get to taste game meat and an opportunity for him to create nutritional meals for people who need it.

Game bird hunters cannot shoot and sell the meat, but they can give it to Nelson Marlborough Fish and Game which freezes it until there is enough for Phil to put into a casserole with vegetables for a wholesome meal.

Volunteers bag the trays of casserole and local Māori health provider Te Piki Oranga distributes the meals across the community.

He has now cooked close to 1,000 charity meals since 2023 and as long as there is game bird meat to cook, he will keep churning them out.

“It is a milestone,” he says. “It’s helping Fish and Game get game bird out into the community and it’s a chance for people to see how nice it can be.

“And I feel good because it’s a really healthy meal and people will do well off it.”

Mostly breast meat is used in the casserole – scanned for pellets - and sometimes leg meat from mallard ducks, with skin removed so there is no fat in the meals that go out to the community.

Even outside of the duck shooting season, Phil says there’s geese and other game birds that are hunted, so he can cook up some casseroles throughout the year.

“Eight of us go down to Oamaru to hunt twice a year and get a mixture of birds that go into the meals. As long as we get the meat, we’ll do a cook.”

Vegetables are donated from Bidford and Raeward Fresh, which are cooked separately to the meat and then combined in the casseroles. The feedback has been positive and the taste – yum.

Nelson Marlborough Fish and Game officer Jacob Lucas says it’s a great way for hunters to give back to the community and it is free-range meat cooked by a chef who is also a hunter.

“He’s really good at showcasing the culinary quality of game birds. One of the reasons hunters go out is to provide food for people and if there’s an excess of meat, they drop it into Fish and Game and we pass it on to Phil. It’s a win-win all round.”

Jacob says the carcases of the birds are given to the Marlborough Falcon Trust, which makes the venture a triple win.