Recipe: Potted Pheasant

This is a version of a pate I suppose really, but its very handy to have a few jars in the fridge. It makes an ideal gift and an excellent shoot day snack, but best of all it is a great way of using up all those phessies that are not quite good enough for roasting.

The recipe also works well with partridge or duck and rabbit too, but time and time again its the pheasants that get this treatment the most. It has proved very popular with the game course attendees at Vale House Kitchen over the years, mostly I think because its so simple, yet so tasty.

Ingredients

1 pheasant, ideally one not good enough for roasting

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

Goose fat

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

250ml red wine

450ml pheasant stock

100g bacon, roughly chopped - dry cured and as fatty as possible

1⁄2 tsp blade mace

1⁄2 tsp black peppercorns

Seed and husk of 1 star anise

Bay leaves (1 per pot)

Method

1. Skin and debone your pheasant - only the breast and thigh meat is required for this recipe. Check to make sure you have cleared the shot or, alternatively, you can buy breasts from a good butcher. The carcass and drumsticks should be saved and used to make a pheasant stock.
    
2. Soften the onion and garlic in a frying pan using some of the goose fat and season with salt and pepper. Add the red wine and reduce until almost all the liquid has gone and the acidic note to the aroma has softened to a sweet and savoury one.
    
3. Add the pheasant stock to the red wine reduction (if you don’t have pheasant stock, feel free to substitute chicken, or pork stock, even a cube, dare I say it, would just about do the job at a push) and continue reducing while you mince the pheasant meat, bacon and more goose fat on a coarse mincer setting. If you do not have a mincer you can chop up the meat by hand and then whizz it in a blender but be careful not to overdo it or you will end up with a strange consistency.
    
4. Take the mace, peppercorns and star anise and grind using a pestle and mortar. Add this seasoning and the red wine stock reduction to the minced meat. Pass this mixture through the mincer once more on a fine setting. Take a small amount of the mixture, fry it off and taste it. Add more seasoning if required.
    
5. You should make sure your pots are sterilised before adding the pheasant mixture - This can be done by scalding them with boiling water for 30 seconds.
    
6. Empty the water and then put the meat mixture into your sterilised pot. Make sure you don’t over fill it otherwise the mixture will bubble over. Place one bay leaf in the top of the pot before putting the pots a tray of water.
    
7. Place the jar lids in a position where they can be closed quickly as soon as they come out the oven. They should be cooked in the water tray at 170°C/gas mark 21⁄2 for about an hour. Remove from the oven, seal the jars immediately and leave to cool. Store the jars in the fridge and use within a week, they will keep a lot longer than that I suspect but its best to be on the safe side.

This is the perfect elevenses treat or works well as a canapé or part of a cold lunch spread, you can also use the un cooked mixture for sausage rolls and pasties, large or bite size, with some success.

Tim Maddams in conjunction with Vale House Kitchen
Find out more about Vale House Kitcken shoot & game cookery courses

Recipes are written by Celebrity Chef Tim Maddams in conjunction with Vale House Kitchen, who run fantastic courses incorporating shoot days and game cookery courses for novices and experienced guns.

Tim has worked under such culinary luminaries as Fergus Henderson, Alistair Little, Marco Pierre White and Mark Hix, as well as leading the VIP catering team for the Ferrari F1 team in Europe. The lure of his country roots was never far away and so Tim returned to the South West and started work at River Cottage.