The Cottage Smallholder

A nibble of cold pheasant, straight from the fridge, is good if a little dry when one is grazing at lunchtime. But I never fancy a proper meal of cold game remnants.This is a hot pie that we made using up the Gypsy style pot roast pheasant leftovers (about half a pheasant) including the remains of the delicious gooey sauce from the base of the casserole (2 tablespoonfuls). You have to make the first dish to get the essential elements of the second. We love this pot roast pheasant but love the sauce more.

I was surprised at how much meat was left on the carcass, apart from a leg, wings and one breast. We thought chestnut mushrooms would be good to bulk out the meat. Poking about in the fridge for the spring onion (continental sized) I found a can of cider. The perfect ingredient to lighten the sauce.

The final result was a very tasty pie indeed, much more tempting than a bit of cold pheasant. The mushrooms were a great addition and diffused the gaminess of the pheasant well.

Our pie would feed four, with a starter or pud. Pretty good for half a cold pheasant that neither of us fancied after indulging at the weekend.

Pheasant and mushroom pie with cider recipe (feeds 4 with a starter)

Ingredients:

• Half a cold pheasant
• 100g of butter
• 250 g of chestnut mushrooms. Washed and halved – small ones., quartered – larger ones
• 1 large spring onion (continental) sliced 5cm into the green end
• 75 ml of cider
• 2 teaspoonfuls of Mushroom Ketchup
• Puff pastry (we cheat and buy this)
• 1 dessertspoonful of milk (to glaze)

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 160c (140c fan).
2. Gently heat the butter in a medium saucepan and add the chopped mushrooms. Turn and coat with the butter for a couple of minutes.
3. Add the sliced spring onion. Remove from the heat and put a lid on so all flavours meld.
   Meanwhile remove the pheasant meat from the carcass and chop into small 2 cm pieces. Be careful to look for and remove shot (unless you know that it is a road kill) and spintered bones.
4. Heat the sauce gently with the cider and add the mushroom ketchup. Finally add the meat and mushroom mixture and stir well . This doesn’t need to heat through as it will be 40 mins in the oven.

Method: for the pastry top:

We cheat here, and buy a pack of ready-rolled puff pastry. It works so much better than shortcrust, soaking up the sauce on the plate and looks pretty.

• Put the phesant filling into a cold pie dish
• Line the edge of the pie dish with a strip of pastry and press well down. Press the lid firmly with a finger all the way round before trimming the lid (leave 0.5 cm overhang to allow for shrinkage).
• Make four holes in the top to allow air to escape, add any pastry decorations (I usually cut leaves from the pastry trimmed from the corners of the pie dish) and brush all the pastry with milk (we drink semi skimmed so this was used for tonight’s pie).
• Bake in the centre of the oven at 180? (160? fan) for 30 minutes and then increase the heat to 200? (180? fan) for ten minutes to brown the top. (When we followed the instructions on the pack to cook at 220? (200? fan), the pastry burnt on the top and was soggy underneath.)