It's all in the game: A pot roast pheasant and feathers for a trout

Well I was stopping off at my very good friends Marga and Ewald in Bonn on my return from my Christmas run around. I was actually there to pick up my camera that I had left by mistake on the way down to France the previous year. But it is always smashing to see them Marga was my first Land-lady in Rheda when I came here 19 years ago, she runs an old peoples home on the outskirts of Bonn and I have spent many wonderful times there. (all right you lot stop it, I am not in need of looking after, JUST YET).

We always have a nice evening either in the Wintergarten or in the Kaminzimmer. The ritual is always the same, Ewald cooks steak and makes a salad from his own field,this is done around the kitchen table over a bottle of local wine, that Ewald has searched out from the winzers of the near by Ahr region.

The Ahr wines are some of the lesser known German wines, as the vinyards only produce a small quanity. There have been vine yards in this part of Germany since the legions of Rome came through and planted the vines in the Eifels volcanic soil, this area of the eifel still has warm spars and volcanic hot spots and every so often there will be a bit of a mini earth quake. Though there are no internationally known wines or great vintages, they produce some very pleasant light reds.

But back to the Kammer-zimmer small talk, we got on talking about fishing which is one of both Ewalds and my great passions, I was inquiring about his next angling trip, (he has done the British columbia rivers, Alaska and has been a regular in Irland) he said that he and his pals where off to North Bavaria on the river Wisent to do a bit of wild brown trout fly fishing over the Whitsuntide (Pfingstwoche). Alas he said that his friend, fly fishing pal and flytier in chief "Willi" had because of the lack of niederwild been unable to get any pheasant feathers to tie their favorite fly's. I said I would see what I could provide when I got home to Westphalia. I am sure that he thought that due to lateness of the evening and the corpius amount of Ahr grape juice that I would forget.

Now not forgetting that this was 9th Jan and the pheasant season closes on the 18th, I did forget! But one of my hunting pals at work happened to say that his dad had a shoot on the last day of the season, a dim light became a beacon and ping, bingo my promise to Ewald sprang into mind. I said, I want, no I must have a pheasant, what time is the shoot?

The star of the show

So now we have our pheasant, lets start with the plucking and skinning, I would normally skin a pheasant, as I am not a great lover of pheasant skin., I also tend to pot roast my birds as they are in the main cocks and many are not all that young.

This time as it was primarily the feathers that I was after, I started by plucking the ones that I wanted mainly the tail, ruff, head and wing feathers.

bit of a pull

out came the tail and wing feathers

Next when all the useful feathers removed the skinning

Skinning the bird

Finished skinning, the waste feathers to be disposed of.

The plucked, drawn and freshly bathed pheasant, notice the shot trail across its breast

Vacuum packing for the freezer

2 weeks ago Linda came down for the weekend, it was cold and icy, so I though, a nice pot roast pheasant would be just the job for Sunday lunch. I had removed the pheasant from the freezer to thaw out nice and slow on the balcony, but it was that cold I had to take it in and thaw it out in the warmer fridge.

That done on Sunday morning, I set about preparing the pot roast. I first salted and pepered inside and out, sprinkled with a good desert spoon full of game spices, heated up some neutral oil in my trusty cast iron casserol and browned it all over.

Removed and added a chopped up onion with a 100g of juniper smoked pork belly (pre-cooked) sautéd this until the onions translucent.

Next added some sliced carrots, white of a small leek and sliced mushrooms, coloured these, added a 1/4 of a lemon, placed the bird on top, sprinkled with rosemary from the grinder, added a sprig of time and a sprig of parsley complete with stalks, poured in a liter of good homemade chicken stock.

put the lid on and popped into the oven at 180°C for 2 hours. The result was a moist, falling off the bones, tender as hell delicious pot roast pheasant

Strained the liquid through a funnel strainer, added a good 1/4L of Riesling and reduced, checking taste at the end, (it didn't need any additions).

This was served with the floury potaoes and riesling sauerkraut (the rest of the riesling for the sauce was used to do this) along side some very nice snow pea pods just sauted with a bit of speck.