Cornelia van der Poll finds several ways to cook a pheasant and offers some delicious recipes.
The game season starts in August with grouse and moves on to partridge in September, but it is with the arrival of pheasants in butchers’ shops in October that autumn is properly here. Traditional recipes for pheasant recommend roasting or braising the whole bird, but the inconvenient fact is that what works for the breasts tends not to produce the best results with the legs. A grouse, mallard or partridge can be successfully roasted and served whole, but pheasant legs have too many tendons which get in the way. Pheasant breasts are a gift to the cook in a hurry. The breasts of a young bird can be fried and left to rest in the oven while the pan is deglazed with white wine. The breasts of an older bird are best cooked on the bone, either draped with rashers of streaky bacon, gently roasted in a not-too-hot oven for 40 minutes to an hour and served with a compote of fruit, or braised.
Some recipes give up on the legs entirely and tell you to use them for stock, but the leg meat is far too tasty to waste. The elegant and frugal solution is to remove the legs from the carcass and cook them separately.
Pheasant legs can be braised with vegetables and aromatics until they are tender for a homely dish packed with flavour. Remove as much fat as you can, as well as any feathers and shot. To make the legs easier to eat, you can also remove some of the tendons. To do this, cut the skin across the thin end of the leg and pull out as many tendons as you can easily reach with a pair of pliers. Brown the legs and braise them with onion, garlic, celery, carrots, a tomato, herbs from the garden, peppercorns, some wine and perhaps a little of whatever stock you may have in the freezer, on a low heat for an hour or so (or two to three hours in the slow cooker), strain and reduce the gravy if it is too runny, and serve with lentils, mash or polenta and a sprinkling of parsley.
Another way is to poach the legs and remove the meat from the bone, which has the added advantage of producing a lovely rich stock. Put the legs in a slow cooker or stockpot and cover with cold water. Set the slow cooker to low and leave for four hours or bring to the boil on the hob and simmer gently for two to three hours, until the meat comes easily off the bone. Extract as much meat as you can with two forks and discard all the fat. Then throw the bones back into the pot and simmer for another two hours with vegetable trimmings (onion, carrot, celery, leek or celeriac). You can also poach a whole bird this way, in which case the breasts should be removed after simmering for about 40 minutes to an hour. They are delicious served cold in thick slices with homemade mayonnaise or a good chutney. And be sure to pick all the meat from the carcass.
When the stock is done, leave it to cool, discard all the bones and strain the liquid through a double thickness of muslin or the finest sieve you have. Refrigerate overnight and strain again to remove the fat.
Pheasant in olive oil
This is an Italian take on potted pheasant, and is a good way to use up leftovers of cooked pheasant. It is tremendously simple to prepare and goes beautifully on toast or in a salad.
Put some extra-virgin olive oil in the bottom of a jar. Add the meat with a sprinkle of salt, a few whole peppercorns and a bay leaf. Press it down to exclude as much air as possible and pour over some more oil until the surface is just covered. Put the lid on and store in the fridge. It will keep up to a week.
Pheasant soup
Serves four
Meat from six poached pheasant legs, about 6 oz
Stock from poaching the legs, about 2 pints
2 anchovy fillets
1 oz butter
1 oz plain flour
A pinch of ground mace or nutmeg
Half a glass of white wine or sherry
The juice of ¼ lemon
Croutons or chopped fresh parsley or chives to garnish
Blend the pheasant meat with the anchovy fillets, the mace or nutmeg and a ladleful of stock until smooth.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour with a wooden spoon to form a roux. Pour stock onto the roux little by little and keep stirring to incorporate the liquid and prevent lumps forming. Bring to the boil and simmer until the mixture thickens slightly.
Add the purée, wine or sherry and lemon juice and simmer for a few more minutes. Season to taste. Garnish and, for a special occasion, stir in a swirl of cream.
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