Sunday Roast: Emma’s easy roast chicken recipe with automatic garlic sauce (also works well with roast pheasant)
My friend Emma gave me this special roast chicken recipe. Everyone loves it, including her young children and it’s quick and easy to prepare. The chicken sits in the stock as it roasts so it is succulent and full of flavour. The garlic sauce is delicious and doesn’t blow your head off. If you are looking for an easy way to cook pheasant this recipe works very well with game. Ingredients: 1 chicken (approx 1.5 kilos) 1 head of garlic 300-600 ml of hot chicken stock (depending on the size of your casserole. There needs to be enough...
read morePheasant stew with mushrooms, oven baked shallots and Puy lentils recipe
This is the first time that The Cottage Smallholder has participated in a blog event. ‘Waiter There’s Something In My…’ is hosted across three great sites. The first theme is stews. *See the bottom of this post for the link to the details. Tasty pheasant dishes needn’t be rich to be good. This stew is packed with flavour and is good to eat at this stage in the season when you might be beginning to suffer from a surfeit of rich game dishes. We call this condition Pheasantitis. The only remedy is to freeze the birds...
read morePheasant braised with grapes, clementine juice and white wine recipe
Sometimes the Cottage Smallholder game plucking service comes in very handy. We’ll pluck and draw some game in exchange for a brace of pheasant or partridge. This gives us a good supply of fresh game right through the shooting season. This is our own recipe for pheasant and grapes, braised in clementine juice and white wine. The fruit both tenderises the flesh and balances well with the rich meat of the pheasant. Loads of summery flavours. The ginger wine was an experiment that worked surprisingly well. This is quick to prepare and...
read moreDavid’s pheasant breasts sautéd in butter and marsala recipe
You will need a steak hammer for this recipe or a sturdy wooden rolling pin. This is the story of how I found mine. Many years ago, at the end of my first tumultuous love affair, my mother gave me a two week holiday on the island of Hero (one stop on from Gomera) in the Canary Islands. She booked me into a hotel that was starred in The Good Hotel Guide. She had loathed my boyfriend and probably hoped that I’d meet a new Adonis. I was happy to go along with the plan and arrived safely on the island in a small propeller plane. The spacious...
read moreMelt in the mouth partridge recipe
French partridge are such pretty birds. I see quite a few when I’m driving around the villages. These are busy, sociable birds that move about in small groups. They rush to hide in the hedgerows with quick neat steps and beaks held high as Jalopy thunders past. Some friends of mine reckon that they mate for life. A solo male partridge moped around their garden for days until I clomped into a dark barn wearing my hob nailed boots and by mistake, trod on him. There was a soft sighing cry. I rushed up to the house to fetch a...
read morePot roast pheasant (gypsy style) recipe for Christmas Eve
A Cottage Smallholder Christmas tradition is pot roast pheasant on Christmas Eve. Partly because it’s in season and is a treat but mainly because it’s bunged in the oven for a good hour an a half whilst I get on with another task such as helping Father Christmas with packing the stockings for the household. F.C. usually stops for a sherry early evening to swap recipes, although it’s awkward manoeuvring the sleigh in the back since we fenced the kitchen garden and shortened the runway (Heathrow take note). Cooking game can be...
read moreHow to pluck and draw game: a partridge or pheasant.
Game is a treat. We don’t shoot and I don’t know many people who do. Hero of the kitchen garden, John Coe, is a beater during the winter months and sometimes brings us a brace of pheasant. His presents are always hung and dressed, ready for the pot. Occasionally we’re given a brace of pheasant or partridge, complete with feathers Until today, I have hung, skinned and drawn them, and then cooked them slowly, enclosed in a casserole. Now I know how to pluck a bird. By keeping the skin our repertoire of recipes has increased...
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