I was given one of my Christmas gifts a month early this year, and — surprisingly — so had several of the other participants attending a day school on game cookery at Thyme, Southrop. It seems that more and more people are providing their friends with an “experience gift voucher” rather than a Christmas gift wrapped in festive paper and tied with a large bow.

It all began with book vouchers, but now you can now obtain gift vouchers for almost anything. Even my local family butcher Richard Golsby, from Eynsham, is offering meat gift vouchers now. He says they are proving really popular, as they take the stress out of gift shopping and provide those who receive them with an opportunity to indulge in an expensive cut of meat they wouldn’t normally buy.

I received my voucher for the Thyme Cookery School’s Game Day, after discussing the way game cookery has evolved over the years. I had mentioned to a friend that I would love to catch up with some of today’s methods of cooking game. She took the hint and came up with a voucher that entitled me to a day’s game cookery with Sebastian Snow, in an idyllic Cotswold village just 40 minutes from Oxford.

Sebastian is head chef at Southrop’s lovely little pub, The Swan, which has been named The Good Food Guide’s UK Restaurant of the Year 2010/11. He runs the pub with his wife Lana and is really enthusiastic about the fantastic food he can source locally, which means that The Swan is now considered a serious food destination. Before taking over The Swan, the couple ran the iconic West London restaurant, Snows on the Green, as well as three other top-flight restaurants in the capital.

Having taught at Leith’s London Cookery School too, he is well placed to teach at Thyme Cookery School.

The day’s course began with instructions on how to prepare a wild game bird quickly and without mess should we be presented with one in full feather. Several of those attending found that particularly useful as they lived in rural Gloucestershire and often received braces of pheasants.

When I was first taught to cook game many years ago, we were instructed to hang the birds by their heads in a cool place — the shed perhaps — and wait until the body fell off, at which point they would be ready for cooking. This gave the meat a ‘high’ gamey flavour, which is no longer very popular, though, as we were informed, it is worthwhile to leave them a couple of days if you desire a light gamey flavour.

We were also reminded that hanging does help tenderise the meat, particularly if you are handling an older bird, which have longer, sharper spurs than the young birds.

Young birds tend to have a soft, pliable beak and short, blunt spurs. The older bird’s claws will be thicker, and perhaps a little ragged after a year of scratching for food in the wild, and the beak will be stronger. If it has reached the size of a small chicken then it is undoubtedly an old bird that should be braised rather than pan-fried.

The first recipe Sebastian demonstrated was potted pheasant, which he served with Melba toast. What a joy it was to watch an experienced chef deftly ripping the cooked pheasant meat off the bone and mixing it with a reduced liquid created from Madeira, peppercorns, cardamom and juniper and chopped shallots. He made it seem so easy — as it is actually: once you have reduced the sauce, it is just a matter of placing sauce and pheasant meat with a little softened butter into a food processor and zapping it until the mixture has become reasonably smooth. The resulting mix can then be spooned into ramekin dishes, sealed with a little melted butter, then chilled.

Having tasted this delicious concoction we all decided that as this potted pheasant can be made several days in advance, it would make a great reserve dish for the festive period.

Making the Melba toast is easy, too, and can be stored in a biscuit tin for several days. It is made by toasting slices of bread on both sides, cutting off the crusts, then running a knife through the soft bread in the middle to divide it in two.

All you have to do then is place the slices into a hot oven to toast the exposed bread until it curls a little and turns a light brown. The result is a delicious crispy toast that costs hardly anything to make, but looks fantastic.

Other dishes we cooked with Sebastian included a superb game pie and a carpaccio of venison, which we enjoyed for lunch with a glass of champagne.

Those of us who had been given the day as a gift, agreed it had proved a great experience.

For further information about the Thyme gift voucher scheme you can go to the website (www.ThymeAtSouthrop.co.uk).