i am a pheasant plucker and pheasant pluckings fun

and we have finally hit half way! unfortunately, i am two thirds the way through the time, gulp! but, as i always say, fear not! i have a few meats up my sleeves for the next week or so, so watch this space (and the tv, bbc three, 8th january, 10.30pm).

on my way back to london i also dropped by bodge's house (bodge is the dude who gave me the partridges for getting him a Glastonbury festival ticket) as he had a lovely pair of pheasants hanging around. these birds were shot on the 22nd of december and so were pretty honky by the time i picked them up but luckily their smell didn't permeate my clothes in the car trip. when i got home i lobbed them in the fridge and promptly didn't eat them.

some days later and it is today and time to eat the birds before they sit around for too long and get a bit horrible. with vague memory of the partridges we took the pheasants outside and promptly went to work plucking them, badly i might add.after some feathery minutes we realised we had stolen all their skin too, yum. getting a bit tired (hey, i am ill you know. not an excuse. seriously, yo.) i decided not to draw them and to just steal their meaty looking breasts. the male bird had a severe wound on one of his so that was out of the question unfortunately. three breasts later and a garden full of feathers we were done with the maiming.

i cleaned the breasts up a bit and made sure no shot was still in them and then got to work smothering them in butter infused with ground coriander. my hands got a bit sticky but it all smelt good. i then wrapped the pheasant breasts in tendersweet bacon and put them in the oven at gas mark something.

whilst that was all cooking lois chopped some shallots finely, and some leeks not so finely. after some cooking i heated a tray of olive oil and then added loads of potatoes. yes, i love roast potatoes, no-one in this world doesn't. lots of dry cider was also added to the pheasant breasts and left to cook on a lower heat for aaaages. in this time the leeks were cooked in a crème fraîche sauce and the shallots were cooked in even more cider with later coagulation via flour addition. or something. anyway, the final dish appeared thus:

that's the pheasant/bacon breast under the shallot sauce, which was incredibly sweet. the potatoes came out good too, yum. but the meat is what you're here for and here are my thoughts: pheasant is nice, though i have had better, partridge springs to mind. the meat wasn't as dark as i thought it would be and was actually a pleasant pink! still, a great meat and a great dish, perhaps too much crème fraîche for my liking, so i shall bear that in mind for next time.