Stuffed Pheasant Breasts With Wild Mushroom Sauce Recipes

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.

Steps:

• To prepare the stuffing: Melt the butter in a saute pan over low heat. Add the onion and celery and cook for 20 minutes, or until the onion is cooked through but not brown. Set aside. Put the crackers in a large bowl, add the egg, the cooked onion and celery, the sage, roasted corn, chicken stock, salt, and pepper and mix well. To stuff and roast the pheasant: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Season the pheasant cavity with some of the salt and pepper, then put the stuffing inside. Truss with skewers or tie with butcher's twine. Season the bird with the remaining salt and pepper. Lay the bacon over the breast. Place the pheasant on a metal roasting rack set inside a roasting pan and place on the middle rack of the oven. Roast for 25 minutes, basting the legs once or twice with the pan juices. After 25 minutes raise the temperature to 450 degrees and finish the bird for 10 minutes more, or until golden brown with an internal temperature of about 140 degrees near the thigh. To prepare the sauce: While the pheasant is roasting, puree the corn kernels in a food processor. You should have about 2 cups of pure. Place in a small saucepan with the habanero. Bring the juice to 200 degrees. Do not boil or the sauce will break. Add the lime juice and salt. To serve: Let the bird rest for 5 minutes before carving. Take the bacon off the breast and carve the bird, dividing the breast and thighs. Serve with the corn sauce and sauteed leeks.