Pheasant with Bacon, Cabbage and Mushrooms, Bread Sauce & Sort of Game Chips

Cooked this way your Pheasant stays really moist, served on a bed of Savoy Cabbage with Bacon and Mushrooms, sort of game chips, and a bread sauce,  it's crammed with flavours and is a Winter supper dish thats simple to make.

Ingredients

Pheasant
Savoy Cabbage
Few rashers of bacon
Chestnut Mushrooms
Can of Cider
Chicken Stock
Onion
Garlic
Thyme - few sprigs

A few Ceps - buy a packet of dried ones from a Polish shop for a couple of quid, you can't believe just how much bang in flavour you get, they seem to lift a dish.

Method

In a frying pan melt a little butter with a splash of olive oil and brown the Pheasant on each side, wipe the pan with a piece of kitchen roll and add strips of bacon, and as they start to fry add chopped onion and chopped garlic, fry until bacon starts to brown and the onions become clear, add mushrooms cut in half and add the Thyme.

Cut the cabbage into about eight pieces, and add to the pan, stir and pour in about half a can of cider and an equal amount of chicken stock. Season, add soaked Ceps and liquid. Allow to simmer for five minutes then pour it all into a casserole dish and place the Pheasant breast down on top of the mixture and cover, into the onion at 180 for about an hour and a quarter.

Then take out of the oven and allow to rest for about twenty mins in the casserole dish. Whilst you pop in the chips into the oven and finish your bread sauce.

So

Bread Sauce, this can be done even before you start this dish, the longer it's left the better the flavour. So if you are making this to go with your Christmas Turkey, make it hours in advance if you like. So anyway step one, chop an onion into quarters add to a pint of milk, add two cloves, a couple of Bay leaves, some peppercorns. Bring the milk to a simmer and after a minute or two switch off the heat (don't let it boil) and set aside.

Later with a seive remove the onion etc from the milk, taste and season, reheat and add torn off small pieces of white bread, best a few days old/slightly stale, continue adding bread and stirring until the sauce has the consitancy you require. Only takes a couple of minutes, and some people add a knob of butter at this point.

Sort of Game Chips?, Well Game Chips are basically posh crisps, but thin potatoes like on the picture are easy and probably nicer. Slice thinly your spuds, rince several times, parboil for five mins, drain and allow them to evaporate their surface water, then spread them out of grease proof paper. The secret with these is to get the pots as dry as poss and really add a lot of seasoning. Heat the oven to 200, put a baking tray in the oven with a little oil, when ready, put the pots in the oven, turning once.

Enjoy the most moist and tasty Pheasant ever with awesome sort of chips and bread sauce. Make it again? I think so....