Pigeon breasts on a bed of roses (pardina) lentils

Pigeon breasts on lentils

I was lying in bed early Saturday morning, when the phone rang, 06:00 just getting light, who the hell is ringing at this time in the morning? It was one of my shooting mates, we are out pigeon shooting get your gear together and will meet you at kleineraschhoff in an hour. Zoom, out of bed, under the shower, green stuff on and out. It was a 4rather nice day, the weather was a little damp but no rain, and in fact it was a very nice morning. We positioned at the edge of the woods and waited for the pigeons to come out of their roosts to feed and come they did, we shot near on 50 within 2 hours. I only wanted a couple for the weekend, it turned out to be 10 (I hadn't planned to, but as they had been talking about lentils on the wild food board, I decided to do lentils with pigeon breasts).

On the way home I went to the market, it was still before most people where out and about and bought a kilo of chicken carcasses and some soup veg to make the stock for the lentils and also for the risotto that I was making for Sunday lunch, more of that later.

First pluck your pigeons

you will have a sack of feathers, how you get rid of them thats your problem

Give them a bath (shower actually, but don't tell Linda she gets a bit funny about sharing the shower)

pick out two with nice plump breasts, vacuum pack the rest for a rainy day

The stock ingredients

1 kilo of chicken carcasses

The 2 pigeon carcasses

Piece of leek, white only roughly chopped

1 large carrot roughly chopped

Piece of celeriac chopped

Stalk of parsley

1 onion halved skin left on and browned in a skillet

1 bay leaf pinned to the onion with 2 cloves

5 juniper berries

5 all spice berries

A piece of mace

10 pepper corns

3 green cardamom pods

2 cm piece of cinnamon bark

1 dried chilli ( one of the last from my balcony harvest)

I had removed the pigeon breasts and made a marinade of shallot, garlic, sherry vinegar, raspberry balsamico, ground game spices, ground pepper, lemon oil and olive oil, plunked them in this and allowed to soak in their bath while the stock was cooking.

 

I browned the onion halves in an oiled skillet

Put the lot into a pressure cooker, pour on 2 ltrs of cold water and 1 ltr of stock (I used low salt Marigold).

Bring to a rolling boil

and skim the grunge that rises to the surface lid on at full pressure for 40 minutes, switch off and allow to cool then there you have your stock , you can adjust the seasoning at this point if needed, but no salt!

Lentils

Sauté a finely diced shallot in a little oil and add some very small diced carrot, leek, celeriac and speck. Pour in about 600ml of boiling stock (you can add more later if required) now add 250g of lentils (I used Pardina) and cook until soft. When soft add a few splashes of raspberry balsamico and stir in

Marinating the breasts



adding the sherry vinegar



Adding the home made sherry vinegar



The breasts in the marinade, cover and leave while the stock is finished and the lentils are cooked

Fry the legs and some shallots to the right you can see the lentils cooking

Heat a little oil in a skillet , remove the breasts from marinade, pat dry and flash fry until they are just how you like them,

remove from the pan and wrap in aluminium foil strain the marinade into the skillet and reduce, adjust seasoning

Remove from the foil, slice pour any juices  into the jus, arrange the sliced breast on top of the lentils and pour the reduction over.

The plate with food

Hey Hoh Thanks for getting me out of bed!!!!!



The plate without food