by Georgia Pelligrini
Editor’s Note: We are delighted to welcome Eating columnist Georgia Pellegrini to Gray’s Sporting Journal. She is a bestselling author of three books—Food Heroes, Girl Hunter and Modern Pioneering—in addition to hosting outdoor adventure getaways and cooking workshops around the country. Her TV show Modern Pioneering airs nationwide on PBS. You can learn more about her work at www.georgiapellegrini.com. This is an excerpt. To get all the recipes, subscribe to Gray’s Sporting Journal.
Early in my quest to learn how to hunt what I cook, I realized there are as many ways to hunt food as there are to cook it.
This has been especially true for upland game birds. I’ve walked the bowl of the Guadalupe River with English setters and pointers and Brittany spaniels weaving in and out of bluestem grass, the red rows a swirl of dogs, their bodies embroidering the grass, until in the last iridescent trickles of afternoon light a chukar crossed my path in a diagonal leap skyward.
I’ve spent mornings in the English countryside with shots ringing out in the misty air, ancient double-barreled side-by-sides lined up in orderly fashion, waiting to see how the woodcock and pigeon fall. And there were the still, shimmering plains of Montana, running up and down the fingers of the hills, grass undulating under a sky that felt so low.
Wild bird hunting is an exploration of the elements, a game of knowing the bird—knowing the Hungarian partridge prefers field stubble and weed seeds, that the pheasant likes tall cover in cattails and fescue, that certain grouse will eat exclusively sage. It is also when you begin to see possibility in things you never have before, such as the beauty of a fanned-out-half-pecked cornhusk lying in a field. The walk can be for hours, an entire day, until, at last, there is a double shot that blows the trees full of life and a pheasant paints the wind.
There is a mystical quality in the pheasant rooster as he shoots into the air like a feathered arrow in all his green and purple splendor. I often hesitate when I see the rooster, in awe of his faultless beauty, the long spike of his tail feathers, tapered for aerodynamic flight.
Sometimes the rooster doesn’t fall. Sometimes he will keep flying because he is a rooster, and he is mysterious. Sometimes he will leave only a single feather floating on the ground for you to ponder.
All of this makes me hungry. I anticipate the smells of sizzling meat bathed in browning butter—the evenings of everlasting medleys of food and drink and chatter and smoke. When you have worked so hard for dinner, there is nothing else to do but honor every morsel with just the right recipe.
PHEASANT BREAST STUFFED WITH WALNUTS, CURRANTS AND HERBS
This is an elegant dish, and the stuffing is good enough to eat on its own by the spoonful. In addition to pheasant breast meat, you can try this with deboned whole bird, like quail, where the flavors can be scooped up and swallowed together, rather than having to pick around the bones. The birds become little packages this way, which can be tied off with a strand of green onion or chive.
Deboning may sound intimidating, but there are good online video tutorials if you want to take on that adventure. Or you can simply get a good pair of kitchen shears and cut along both sides of the backbone and remove the spine, which will allow you to wrap the bird around the stuffing but keep the remaining bones in. If all that sounds like too much, then simply use the pheasant breasts and save the legs and carcass for a good soup.
Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Serves: 4
5 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons finely diced shallots
2 celery stalks, peeled of outer strings and finely diced 1/2 cup white wine
4 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts 2 tablespoons dried currants
2 cloves garlic, diced
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
4 tablespoons chopped fresh flat parsley leaves 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
4 pheasant breasts Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Meanwhile, melt 6 tablespoons of the butter in a small sauté pan and sweat the shallots and celery over low heat, until translucent. Add the white wine and reduce by half. In a small bowl, combine the walnuts, currants, garlic, bread crumbs, parsley and thyme. Once the wine is reduced by half, stir the bread crumb mixture and cook until it thickens and forms a paste. Season with salt and pepper to taste and set aside.
Set the breast meat between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound it gently with a rolling pin or meat tenderizer. Distribute a lump of stuffing into the center of the breast meat of each and wrap the meat around the stuffing. Fasten with a toothpick through the seam.
Lay the pheasant in a cast-iron skillet with 2 tablespoons of butter. Place the skillet in the oven and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, basting the top of the meat with butter three times during the process. Remove from the oven and remove the toothpicks carefully from each. Serve immediately.
Also try this recipe with quail, duck, grouse and wild turkey.
