• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • about Dom in the Kitchen
  • contact me
  • pr & demo’s
  • Private Dining

Dom in the Kitchen Homepage

Recipes from my Lincolnshire kitchen

  • Home
  • Chicken Thighs
  • Bread
  • Cakes
  • Eggs
  • Vegetarian
  • Everything else

pheasant belleau

2 May 2012 by Dominic Franks

… 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…

difficult to make such a rustic dish look glamorous…

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!

Share this post:

Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on E-mail

Filed Under: Everything else Tagged With: cider, Lincolnshire Life Magazine, one pot, pheasant normandy, skidbrooke cyder, slow-roast

Previous Post: « random recipes #16 – first and last
Next Post: nettle and cotehill blue cheese quiche »

Reader Interactions

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Comments

  1. One man and his hob says

    2 May 2012 at 8:48 am

    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……..

  2. Food Urchin says

    2 May 2012 at 10:29 am

    Lucky you, getting hold of some pheasants at this time of year. Like you say, a great recipe for this sort of weather.

  3. mummy says

    2 May 2012 at 10:56 am

    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

  4. Magnolia Verandah says

    2 May 2012 at 12:40 pm

    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.

  5. Alida says

    2 May 2012 at 1:29 pm

    Yummy pheasant, so juicy and full of flavour. Look forward to your story and to the cider!

  6. Marmaduke Scarlet says

    2 May 2012 at 1:51 pm

    Comfort food at its very best. Now where can I buy a pheasant in London that won't cost an arm and a leg? πŸ™‚ I have my sou'wester and wellies, so am prepared to travel!

  7. Kavey says

    2 May 2012 at 2:17 pm

    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…

    πŸ™‚

  8. laura@howtocookgoodfood says

    2 May 2012 at 6:23 pm

    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!

  9. Janice says

    2 May 2012 at 9:18 pm

    Cider sounds like a perfect accompaniment to pheasant. I like pheasant but not keen on plucking them.

  10. Jean says

    2 May 2012 at 10:28 pm

    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.

  11. Baking Addict says

    2 May 2012 at 10:38 pm

    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! πŸ™‚

  12. From Beyond My Kitchen Window says

    3 May 2012 at 12:55 am

    My market's meat department does not sell pheasant. I'm wondering if duck would be a good option.

  13. Mark Willis says

    3 May 2012 at 6:33 am

    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%).

  14. VegBoxBoy says

    3 May 2012 at 7:10 am

    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.

  15. Karen S Booth says

    3 May 2012 at 5:42 pm

    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!

  16. StephenC says

    3 May 2012 at 6:29 pm

    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.

Primary Sidebar

About Dom In The Kitchen

My name is Dominic, I am a cook, food writer and creative event producer. I write the food blog Dom In The Kitchen and also write a monthly recipe column for Lincolnshire Life Magazine and Good Taste Magazine. I also run creative event production company The Persuaders, producing global events for brands since 1997. I am based both in the small village of Belleau in Lincolnshire and the smaller village of London! Read More…

Subscribe

Get new posts by email:
Powered by follow.it
  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Archives

Tweets by @DomInTheKitchen

as featured in Lincolnshire Life Magazine

Lincolnshire Life

creatively managed by

The Persuagers
Belleau Cottage

Footer

This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: No feed found.

Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to create a feed.

&copy 2010 - 2021 | All rights reserved | Website by Peckish Digital