Adventures with a pheasant.

My cooking's gone all autumnal in the last week or so. Lots of heavy warming things, like split pea and ham soup, sausage cassoulet and lots of things with mash. I have to admit I'm quite enjoying it! This rather continues on the same theme.

One of the perks of being the annoying person who bangs on about food all the time is that people sometimes ask for recipe help. A lovely colleague of mine won a lot of pheasants in a raffle, and was asking for suggestions for how to cook them. I'd never cooked pheasant before, and admitted this straight away, but then Googled recipes and passed them on. In return, said lovely colleague brought me a pheasant. I think it rather confused everyone we worked with when she walked into the newsroom and plonked a pheasant on the desk but hey ho. Helpfully she had gutted it, and also skinned it (because it wasn't plucking very well).

So my challenge on Friday night was to find a way to cook it without it being tough as old boots! True to form I googled it, looked up lots of recipes, then ignored them and made it up.

So here it is:

Pot roasted pheasant with bacon and cream with boulangere potatoes

First job was the potatoes. I decided I couldn't possibly have mash for the third time this week, so wanted to do something slightly different. Boulangere potatoes are a bit like dauphinois although without the insane amounts of cream.

 

Slice an onion and some potatoes as thinly as you can and layer them up in a buttered dish with salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme. Dot some butter on the top and pour in about half a pint of chicken or vegetable stock. Cover with tin foil and put in the oven at about 180 degrees. It'll take about 45 minutes, but be sure to uncover it for the last fifteen minutes. 

First brown your pheasant all over in some butter in a big oven proof pan. (I still dream of le Creuset which would have been perfect for this, our roasting tin has a lid so I used that.) Put to one side while you prepare the rest.

Fry off some smoked bacon lardons before adding finely slice shallots, garlic, a stick of celery and a carrot.

Season well, then chuck in some thyme and a few bay leaves then a very generous glass of white wine - as much as you are willing to use for cooking rather than drinking. Let that bubble away for a few minutes to burn off some of the alcohol. Then add three quarters of a pint of chicken stock and a good slug of cream. Bring up to the boil, stick the pheasant back in, put the lid on and shove in the oven for about 25 – 30 minutes. After that leave it to rest for ten minutes in the sauce.

Take the pheasant out and reduce the sauce down for a few minutes, and you're good to go. If the pheasant cools too much carve it, and pop it back in the sauce to warm through.

Serve with greens (I love kale, so we had steamed kale with butter and pepper) It was very tasty! It was still a little tougher than I would have liked, I think I would joint it next time and effectively casserole it, it might help with the legs in particular, but it wasn't too bad at all. We had the leftovers as a snack today and the sauce is just unbelievable.