[Sca-cooks] Pheasants

[Nicolas Steenhout]

Vicente,

Seems like you have a good understanding of the difference between your
farm raised game and an equivalent wild meat.

I have found it unnecessary to wrap the fowl in fat when oven roasting,
*if* you control the temperature of the oven, and if you control the
internal temperature of the bird.  In other words, don't over cook the wee
beastie :-)

So, a few ideas for cooking the thing...

If you want to go fancy...  Lift the breast off the carcass, ending up with
only meat, no bone.  Brown the meat in *very* *hot* pan, very briefly (you
don't want to cook it, you want to simply brown it a little bit).  Then
wrap the breasts in phylo pastry (using regular multi layer technique),
shove the whole thing in the fridge.

Use the carcass to make a brown stock.  Use the legs to do whatever you
wish!  Most hunters won't even bring back the legs of pheasant, as they say
it's too full of tendons to do anything with it.  I'd disagree with that,
been known to pull the tendons out with plyers, or cut the meat to do
pates, or any other kind of stuff.

Anyway, reduce the brown stock till it gets a little thicker.  With the
carcass of one bird, you should be able to make a real nice concentrated
juice, about 2, 3 ounces of liquids.  You can use this as is, or add a bit
of cognac, brandy, or even Sherry or Port.

Prepare a puree of fresh raspberries, warm it up, do NOT add sugar.  When
you are ready to serve, or nearly so, put the packets of phylo/pheasant in
a very hot oven, like 500, until the phylo is browned.  By that time, you
will have a medium rare (or so) piece of pheasant breast in the
phylo.  Serve with both the stock reduction and the raspberry puree.

I'd garnish with snow peas, baby carrots, and "parisienne" potatoes (melon
balled, and pan fried in butter)

Or

Stuffed pheasant with stilton and apricot...

roast a small red Bell pepper, peel the skin off.  chop finely.  roast a
couple cloves of garlic.  cut down two apricots, mix cheese, garlic, half
the pepper, stuff in pheasant breast (where you've slit a "pocket" in the
breast).

Cook the other half of the pepper, the other two apricots, the roasted
garlic, in some dry white wine.  puree the whole thing.  Pan fry the
breasts, serve with the light puree.

Lemme know if you want more :-)

Did I mention that wild meat and game meat is a bit of a passion of mine? :-)

At 07:03 PM 10/26/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>Last weekend, I managed to get my mitts on a farm-raised pheasant.  I've
>been looking around for some good recipe ideas, but most of the recipes on
>the Internet are for wild pheasants.  Since my wife and I are trying to cut
>down on the fat intake, the prospect of wrapping the bird in fatback before
>roasting does not necessarily appeal to us.
>
>I've never worked with pheasant before, so I'd like to know as much as
>possible before cooking it.  Since it's a game bird, I'm guessing the fat
>content is going to be lower than your standard grocery store chook.  Since
>it's farm-raised, I'm guessing it'll have a milder flavor and a bit more fat
>than a wild pheasant.  Perhaps a gentle braise in white wine...
>
>So, does anyone have a favorite pheasant recipe?  It doesn't have to be
>period, but something a little out of the ordinary would be nice. (I'm
>planning a somewhat gourmet dinner for my sweetie, and I like showing off
>for her.)
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Vicente
>
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Muiredach mac Loloig
Rokkehealden Shire
aka
Nicolas Steenhout
"You must deal with me as I think of myself" J. Hockenberry