Sunday Lunch : Pleasant Pheasant

It's been a gluttonous weekend. Thai food on Friday night, giant burgers on Saturday and traditional (i.e. big) Sunday lunch today.



I started off early this morning with some of the ham that Mr K-E brought back from his snow boarding trip. Oh, it just melts in the mouth....







It's been a while since we have had a roast dinner, so today I thought I would perform the "good wife" routine and cook Sunday lunch. Yes, pheasant! Hahaha, I am a "good wife"! (Mr K-E's parents brought us a pheasant when they visited two weeks ago. They live in the countryside and often get given pheasants by their hunting-shooting friends.)






It's terrible how spoilt we are by supermarket culture. The pheasant had been plucked, hung and cleaned, but I was quite disgusted because it still had a few feathers on it and it was "bleeding". I remember my Mum killing chickens at the back of our house - I think if I had to kill and clean a chicken myself, I would quickly turn vegetarian.





I had to ask Mr K-E to singe off the long hairs that still remained on the bird.








I have eaten pheasant before but I have never cooked it myself so I looked online for some tips first. Apparently you need to add lots of butter or other fat to the pheasant to keep it moist during roasting as it doesn't have a lot of fat itself. So I pushed knobs of butter underneath the skin which seemed to do the trick.



When I cook roast chicken, I normally stuff the cavity with lemon wedges, onions and bruised garlic cloves; I thought it would work well with pheasant too. Then we just placed the bird onto a roasting pan surrounded by potatoes (semi-cooked already), carrots, onions and mushrooms. Add lots of salt and pepper, a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil and then into the oven for 60-70 minutes.




While that was going on, I made gravy with the pheasant's heart and liver. I fried a chopped onion in butter, and added the heart and liver (also chopped up). Add some flour to thicken, plus chicken stock, a bay leaf, some lemon juice, salt and pepper plus a little bit of sugar. When the pheasant was cooked I also added the pan juices to make the gravy extra yummy. Mr K-E doesn't like "bits" in his gravy, so I strained it. Home-made gravy is delicious.




Ta da- Traditional Sunday lunch. Mr K-E says that my roast dinners are the best, better than anyone else's. Awww, thanks honey.



I still had room to squeeze in some ice cream with caramel sauce.


Then to complete the great tradition of Sunday lunch, we are now collapsed on the sofa watching Sunday evening TV.