After Christmas I had an encounter with food memory.
Apparently, the homemade Transylvanian sausages and goose hadn't worked over the holidays. So I decided to make some friends a proper English Sunday Nostalgia Pheasant.
The bread sauce and forcemeat recipes are from the head of my mother on the phone. It was like a taste road trip of childhood, maybe dating to some weekend return of father from a pheasant shoot in Wyoming and my mum's cooking of the game.
Forcemeat (for pheasant or chicken)
Breadcrumbs homemade from dry bread
Rind of whole lemon more or less
Parsley to taste (lots—4 bunches)
Salt and pepper
Grated butter (2 nuts or more)
Beaten egg (2 or 3)
Make “paste,” mould in spoon with a cupped hand, cook in piping hot dripping, duck fat, lard four to seven at a time, crispy and brown.
Bread sauce
Onion spiked with cloves
Warm in milk (half liter) to give flavor
Breadcrumbs (2 oz or so, added at last minute, not cooked or roasted)
Nutmeg and salt and white pepper to season
Roast potatoes and parsnips
Five potatoes, five parsnips, cut in halves/quarters, preboil in salted water to softer than imagined softness of al dente
Last 20 minutes of pheasant cooking, on lower shelf, bung this in, having about 50 percent of the drained substantial grease from the roast pheasant. Turn occasionally, so relatively golden brown in about ½ inch of grease.
Nostalgia roast pheasant legs
Eight frozen pheasant legs (1.5 kilo)
Defrost, clean (looking for shot), wash and drain
Rub with salt, lavender, summer savory—sprinkle with a shot of whisky, put aside
Make a fat mixture of foie gras fat, goose fat, and pork fat (bacon, belly) (all Christmas leftovers)
Bake 75 min in preheated oven hot
Cover lightly after 30 mins
Baste frequently, make sure bottom does not burn
With cabbage salad and 2002 Duzsi Tamas Kadarka
Also good with game chips
