Long gone are the days when I went hunting with my dad. He usually got a ringneck pheasant or two on an autumn Saturday. I was lucky to tag along to topple a couple of tin cans off a wall with a BB gun. He'd field dress it, and take it home to my mum, and I remember she'd roast it, covered, on a bed of sauerkraut. Pheasants were, and are, free food and wonderful seasonal eating.
The hunter in your family may be out in the brushy fields stalking game birds. He or she may also have just one shot to drop a pheasant in the wild, maybe the only bird to be taken this season.
These days, I'm a buyer, not a shooter. Farm-raised birds are for sale online at D'Artagnan and other game sites. Around the holidays, Whole Foods Market and similar stores get them (call ahead for price and availability). Or a generous friend who belongs to a hunting club might gift one to you.
If a wild or farm-raised pheasant comes to your kitchen, you, too, will have only one shot to roast the best bird you can.
Cooking pheasant is straight forward. Young birds can be cooked as you would a chicken. Wild or farm-raised, I always roast mine in a Reynolds Oven Bag, a fool-proof product deserving of the plug. If a pheasant is full of shot, however, or not attractive enough to serve whole, poach it in chicken stock, cool, pull meat from bones and either serve in chunks or use, say, in a meat pie. One pheasant will serve two or three, depending on size.
How you carve and serve a roast pheasant depends on the size of the bird. If it's a little guy, say in the one-and-a-half-pound range, serve one-half bird to a person. After the cooked bird has rested, place it on a cutting board; remove the backbone with kitchen scissors, flip it and cut down on either side of the breastbone. A larger bird, say three pounds, can be carved whole like a chicken. Each serving would include breast meat and a thigh.
Since pheasants are fast runners, their legs are full of tendons. Save the drumsticks for a delicious "picking" lunch in the kitchen. And always save the carcass and all bones and bits to make a stock, even a small amount is a delicious treat.
Complement the pheasant meat with cranberry or, better yet, Cumberland sauce, an old-fashioned tart-fruit sauce usually served with meats and game. For minimal fuss, a good substitute would be a red pepper jelly, melted along with a good slug of Port. Round out the meal with autumn favorites: apple, squash, Brussels sprouts and a homemade pie.
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