… I recently visited the delightful people at The Skidbrooke Cyder Company, a local craft-cider maker Guy and his wife Kate who 13 years ago started with 6 trees and now have over 800 and produce near to 30,000 pints of cider each year… i’ll be writing about them in the Food Heroes section of the June edition of Lincolnshire Life Magazine so you’ll have to wait a month for their full story… I also plan to develop a good cider recipe to go alongside the article and have been playing with all sorts of ideas… but my friend Paula gave me a couple of pheasants she acquired during shooting season and I thought i’d try my hand at a twist on a classic pheasant normandy recipe…
… i’ve gone along my chicken thigh ‘one-pot’ rustic route and deconstructed the classic recipe slightly so that it works in this way… and the results are vey pleasing indeed… it’s also a lovely slow roast dish so the flavours have built up nicely in the pot… I would highly recommend it and seeing that pheasant is dirt cheap you really can’t go wrong… its also perfect for this quite frankly disgusting weather we’re having… thank you very much…
pheasant belleau
2 pheasants – jointed
1 large onion – roughy chopped
1 large carrot – roughly chopped
2 medium eating apples – cut into wedges
1 head of garlic – split into cloves, skin on
1 teaspoon pepper corns
1 large bunch of fresh thyme
1 pint of traditional farmhouse cider (non carbonated)
150g mascarpone or creme fraiche
– you will need either a large casserole dish with a tight-fitting lid or a large oven-proof roasting dish and plenty of tin foil
– place the jointed pheasants, the vegetables and apples into a casserole dish, along with the peppercorns and thyme and drench it liberally with cider
– cover tightly with foil and a lid if your dish has one and roast gently for 3 hours on 140C
– after 3 hours, remove the foil, turn up the heat to 190C and roast for a further 20mins, you may want to remove the breast after 15 mins or so…
– the cider should reduce to a sticky mess but if it doesn’t remove the rest of the joints and whack the heat up to as high as you like to reduce the juice further (this could be done in a pan, on the hob but it kind of defeats the whole ‘one-pot’ ethos… but don’t let stubborn determination ruin a good meal…)
– once reduced take it out of the oven, off the heat and add the mascarpone or creme fresh and stir it around until blended into a thick, creamy sauce
– pour the sauce over the pheasant and serve with mash potatoes or something else suitably comforting
expect some more cider recipes coming your way soon… eat and of course, enjoy!
Dom this looks superb! I'm a big lover of Pheasant and game. Cooking it with cider and creme fraiche is wonderful idea. Just off to check my freezer for Pheasants……..
Lucky you, getting hold of some pheasants at this time of year. Like you say, a great recipe for this sort of weather.
mmm looks good Dom – the kitchen must have smelled good whilst it was in the oven. I might try this with……..Chicken thighs! the sauce sounds so good. xx mummy
I love a nice drop of cider. Guy and Kate sound like a real success story. Recently been drinking Pear Cider. Never used it in a dish like this but it looks goooood.
Yummy pheasant, so juicy and full of flavour. Look forward to your story and to the cider!
Comfort food at its very best. Now where can I buy a pheasant in London that won't cost an arm and a leg? 🙂 I have my sou'wester and wellies, so am prepared to travel!
Glamorous food has its place but can be overrated. Nothing to compare to food that is hearty and tasty and filling and delicious and easy to make and comforting and…
🙂
The best bit about this dish id leaving it to it's own devices in the oven. Perfect no effort recipe but with so many good flavours. Also well done for using cider. Look forward to more cider being used on your blog!
Cider sounds like a perfect accompaniment to pheasant. I like pheasant but not keen on plucking them.
We love pheasant. Except the ones that visit our garden during winter, picking up seeds that fall from our birdfeeders and ruining the grass. The highes number we had in the garden at any one time was sixteen. If Nick was a better shot with the air rifle we would have pheasant for dinner more often but all we have is lots of holes in the shed roof.
Your dish looks great to me – rustic elegance in fact !! Thanks for the recipe.
This looks delicious! I've never eaten pheasant before and am not sure if I will try but maybe just a tiny bit as you make it look so good! 🙂
My market's meat department does not sell pheasant. I'm wondering if duck would be a good option.
Sounds like a good way to cook pheasant, which can be pretty dry when roasted. I'd serve it wih Celeriac Mash (potato 60%, celeriac 40%).
Get you '…deconstructed a recipe…' – going all masterchef? Pleasingly when I read the deconstructed recipe it amounts to bung in pot and cook slow. Sounds just the thing indeed for these cold wet spring (well, it's supposed to be spring) evenings.
Deconstructed! LOL! I LOVE it Dom! I have a recipe for pheasant that has apples and cider in it, and it's one of our favourite dishes, so this is RIGHT up my street! LOVE the look of this and it is just what we need for this COLD May!
Even though I have no idea where I could find pheasant here in our nation's capitol, my mind is churning with kernels of ideas of what to do with a cider slow roast like this. I will blog it if I actually do something.