After getting home from school one day I realized I had a
missed call. It was from my old roommate who is now married.
“Hey mang! I’ve got a present for you, call me back!”
As I called him back, I was thinking to myself, what on
earth could he possibly want to give me? He proceeds to tell me that through
some connections of his, he was able to acquire some pheasants. I have never
had a pheasant before. But being the lover of food that I am, I will take
anything that can be eaten.
So of course I want pheasant!
However, I only thought he was going to come over with already cleaned pheasant
meat, maybe two or three full ones. Man was I wrong. When he arrived at my
apartment, he proceeds to pull out two trash bags full of them. And to make it
even better, they had not been cleaned yet. Nothing is fresher than recently
shot and ready to be cleaned pheasant. The most I have ever fully cleaned was
fish. Pheasant was basically the same, only with more time invested into it.
You had to remove the feathers, which was surprisingly easy because the skin
underneath tore right off, break off the head, make a small incision around the
breast, pull out the innards, and break off the legs.
We got to work instantly. Luckily my cowboy friend and
outdoor roommate were close at hand to help. Homework? Who cares. I learned
more just by cleaning those pheasants that night than I ever would reading from
a book. Sleep? Why bother. We were up till about 1 in the morning cleaning them.
The meat was small, it was delicate, and it was beautiful. It is one of God’s
many gifts to man. As we cleaned and gutted, I proceeded to wash them and
remove any shot from the shotgun bullets that remained. There were over 20 or
so, 1 male and the rest female. No small feat, but well worth the time and
effort.
Cleaning the pheasant, we kept it pretty clean while cleaning the pheasants surprisingly.
We decided that we would have a feast with as much of it as
we could, and with as many friends as we could muster up the courage to partake
of this different meat. We did so, in a strangely thanksgiving manner, and
froze the rest.
Again, I had never had nor dealt with pheasant meat. So with
what little knowledge I had on it, I made up a simple meal.
- Bacon wrapped pheasant with a maĆ®tre d’compound butter (which had a slight twist to it, a la James)
- Roasted red potatoes
- Candied carrots with a sweet sugar glaze
The finished plate. Presentation is hard as a college student.
There were a total of about 15 of us enjoying the bounteous
feast. Everything turned out well, after all of the preparation and planning. For many present at the feast, it was a first, and hopefully not
the last either.
After finishing the meal, I learned just how delicate the
meat was simply from deboning them. Anything they teach you about deboning
chicken, please disregard. The meat literally could be pulled off with little
effort, still remaining quite intact. I had to make up my own method of deboning from
trial and error. Pheasant is very dark meat, but also very lean. It dries out
fast, so you do not want to cook it with harsh heat unless you add more
fat/protection to it through barding/larding. The bacon protected the meat, but I would like to try other methods (namely poaching) in the future to see what works best. Needless to say, I have plenty
more pheasant to deal with. And through trial and error, I will become pheasant
king, sort of…