What’d You Do Last Weekend?
Chicken and Waffles? Yes!
Pheasant with Onions in Cider Cream Sauce
Growing up a suburban kid, I never really had the means or opportunity to develop a taste for game. Sure, I knew people who ate venison chili, but it was a dish my friends ate grudgingly - meat brought by some gun-crazy uncle, cooked to death and spiced to cover the smell. But game birds were unheard of in our house. Duck, which I don't really think of as game, being the exception - only because I'm half Chinese and well, you know Peking Duck.
Pheasant was something you saw dead in Old Masters still lifes, not something you get at the grocery store strip mall. So it was with great excitement that I approached my first pheasant over 10 years ago at the Herbfarm.
The Herbfarm. It's the Pacific Northwest's answer to the French Laundry, complete with multitudinous courses, a bucolic setting, and a mighty price tag. But I just had to go, so I read through their theme dinners (all their offerings are themed, usually based on seasonal availability) and picked one that felt truly celebratory. Thanksgiving. If I was going, why not go big?
For such a momentous meal, you'd think I'd remember more of it, but the wine pairings and the 3+ hours of eating and drinking might have had something to do with that. And I wouldn't have dared to bring a camera or a notepad - not then, and probably not even now. But I remember two things, and those two things I recall sharply: pheasant poached in cider and an 1863 madeira, bottled the same year Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. The madeira was unforgettable and once-in-a-lifetime. The pheasant? Here's my version, roasted - but just as memorable.
Pheasant with Onions in Cider Cream Sauce
1 pheasant, giblets removed for use in a different dish
1/4 c + 1/2 tsp olive oil, divided
salt and pepper
1 lb boiling onions, peeled
1/2-3/4 c Unfiltered apple cider
1/2 c heavy cream
- Preheat the oven to 450F.
- Rinse and pat dry the pheasant.
- Rub the pheasant with 1/4c olive oil and season liberally with salt and pepper.
- Place onto a roasting rack. Toss the onions into the bottom of the pan and place in the oven.
- Roast for 60 minutes.
- Remove the pheasant from the roasting pan (and any roasting rack) and allow to rest.
- Deglaze the pan with the apple cider and scrape the bottom for nibbly bits (you can do this and then pour it into a saucepan if it's easier).
- Turn the heat back up and cook the cider down until only about 2 T remains. It will be thick and sticky.
- Turn the heat to low and add the cream to the saucepan, along with the onions. Warm very gently, and cook just until the sauce is incorporated and glazes the onions. Serve with the roasted pheasant.
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