Best 3 Pheasant Breast Stuffed With Apples In A Cider Vinegar And Prune Sauce Recipes

STUFFED PHEASANT BREASTS WITH WILD-MUSHROOM SAUCE

Steps:

• Separate legs and thighs from each bird. Remove and reserve skin, then cut meat away from the bones, being careful to remove small bones and gristle. Set aside.
• Skin, then bone the breasts. The procedure is exactly the same as for a chicken: With the bird lying on its back, use a sharp knife to make a deep incision just beside the breast bone. Then pull the meat - called the supreme - away from the carcass. Repeat the procedure for the other breast, and for remaining pheasant. On the inner side of each breast there will be a small fillet. Remove the stringy nerve from each of them. Using a broad knife blade, pound the small fillets slightly to flatten and set aside.
• Cut deep pockets into each of the supremes for stuffing, taking care not to pierce all the way through. Set aside.
• Use skin, carcass, heart, gizzard and wings to prepare a stock, as one would prepare chicken stock.
• Rinse caul fat under cold water for several minutes, then drain well.
• Prepare the stuffing. Put dark meat from legs and thighs through a meat grinder, or grind in a food processor. Add egg whites, season with salt, pepper and paprika, and pass through a fine mesh sieve, using a stiff plastic scraper, or, if available, use the fine mesh sieve attachment of an electric mixer. Combine meat and egg mixture with the creme fraiche in a mixing bowl and whip with an electric beater for several minutes, or until the mixture is very elastic.
• Saute pheasant livers in butter for about two minutes.
• Open each supreme, carefully add stuffing and in the center of each place half of a sauteed liver. Close supremes so that no stuffing seeps out, and cover the opening with the flattened fillets from Step 2. Wrap each stuffed supreme in a single layer of caul fat. This can be done several hours ahead, then refrigerated. Remove pheasant from the refrigerator about 30 minutes before cooking.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Salt and pepper each supreme, then brown on both sides in butter. Place su-premes in a shallow, buttered pan, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. While pheasant is cooking, prepare sauce and figs.
• To serve, cut each packet on the bias into five or six thin slices, arrange on warm plates and serve with shallot and wildmushroom sauce. The caul fat should have cooked away, and so need not be removed for serving.

PHEASANT BRAISED WITH LEEKS, CIDER & APPLES

Steps:

• For the pickled apples, put the salt, sugar, vinegar and berries in a small pan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, add the apple cubes and set aside.
• Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed, high-sided casserole and season the pheasant joints with salt. Brown them all over, rendering out some of the yellow fat into the pan. Remove to a plate and season with pepper. Add the leeks, bacon and thyme to the pan along with a pinch of salt and a good grind of black pepper, and fry until the leeks have softened - about 8 mins. Add the apple slices and cook until starting to colour on both sides.
• Spoon in the brandy and cook until evaporated, add the cider and simmer for a few more mins to cook off the alcohol. Pour in the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce to a gentle simmer and add the pheasant joints back to the pan, covering with a circle of baking parchment.
• After 15 mins, remove the breasts from the pan to a plate and return the circle of baking parchment to the pan. Cook gently for a further 20 mins, then remove all the pheasant pieces from the pan to a plate and turn the heat up to reduce the sauce. Boil hard for a few min until reduced, then stir in the cream and mace and turn off the heat. Return the pheasant pieces to the sauce - the residual heat will warm it perfectly.
• Divide the pheasant between plates and spoon over the sauce. Garnish with the pickled apples and hazelnuts. Serve with our celeriac colcannon.

BALLOTINE OF PHEASANT

Steps:

• First, make the stuffing. Fry the onion in the butter for 5-10 mins until softened, then leave to cool completely. Thoroughly mix the remaining ingredients in a large bowl, including the cooled onions.
• If the wings are attached, cut at the first joint (on most butchered birds they will have been removed). Find the wishbone between the neck and the breast, then use a sharp knife to scrape away the flesh around it. Gently pull it out, trying to keep it as one, cut it away and discard.
• Place the pheasant, breast side down, on the board. Using a sharp boning knife, see tip, left, cut through the skin to the backbone along the length of the bird.
• Working down the length of the pheasant, slowly run your knife down against the ribcage, keeping close to the bone and scraping the flesh away from both. Twist out the thigh joints when you get to them.
• Very carefully cut away the main carcass. This is where the skin is at its thinnest, so cut carefully as you don't want to nip or pierce the skin.
• Open the bird out like a book and lay it, skin-side down, on the board.
• Season the bird's flesh with salt and pepper then arrange half of the stuffing down the middle of each of the birds in a sausage shape.
• Re-form the bird by lifting the sides up and around the stuffing. After you've done one, repeat with the other pheasant.
• Wrap each pheasant tightly and neatly with bacon so that the bacon goes all the way round the bird and joins on the underside.
• Using butcher's string, tie the pheasant at regular intervals around the width. Then tie it once around the length to hold the stuffing in.
• Finally, tie the legs together. The pheasant can be prepared to this stage and chilled up to a day ahead.
• Heat oven to 200C/ 180C/gas 6. Transfer the pheasant to a roasting tin. Roast for 45-50 mins, basting regularly with the juices from the tin. Finally, cover with foil and rest for about 15 mins. Serve in thick slices with the juices from the pan.