Cookin' Polish

I made dinner last night for Becca, Stevie, and The Dulcinea. I prepared pheasant for the first time ever. In fact, it would be the first time that I'd eat pheasant. Truth be told, I believe it was the first time for all of us. And so, to lose my pheasant virginity, I chose a Polish recipe - ba?ant duszony w miodzie or Pheasant Stewed in Mead. To go along with the bird, I made placki kartoflane z boczkiem - Potato Pancakes With Bacon. Here's some pictures.

Firstly, this is a pic of me mashing up some coarse sea salt and cubebs for my Cormarye. I had it on my camera when I offloaded everything and figured it kinda sorta fit.



Now, on to the meal at hand...The first thing I did was wash the pheasant and liberally apply salt & pepper. I threw it in my cast iron pot hoolie and proceeded to pour a quarter pound of melted butter on it. (Notice the tasty sweet mead.)



Next I added seasoning (including cubebs) and vegetables, including a whole lotta onion, and then the mead...



As it cooked, The Dulcinea came over. Between bouts of hugging & face-sucking, we took in the wonderful aroma of the feast. It smelled delicious! When it was done, it looked like this:



I pulled the bird out of the kettle and cut it up into pieces. Before doing this, however, I added sour cream to the drippings and let that simmer. Once the pheasant was in pieces, I added them to the gravy and let that simmer.



While the meat was simmering, I prepared the potato pancakes. I had cleaned about a million red potatoes that were about 1" in diameter and shredded them by hand. This means that bits of my knuckles no doubt found their way into the batter. With the spuds shredded, I let them drain and fried up some bacon!



With that done, I threw the tender bits of porky goodness into the batter. To fry them, I gave the pan a liberal dose of bacon fat which was bolstered by shortening.



When all was done, I served it up with some pumpernickel bread and blackberry applesauce. It looked something like this:



Just before we all sat down to feast, I grabbed a bit of the pheasant and popped it into my mouth. The tender flesh just melted in mouth and my tongue was coated in a near-miraculous mix of flavors. There was the taste of the pheasant itself with a strong onion taste which was bolstered by undertones of honey and bay. The butter and sour cream made it very rich. We sat down by the fire and attacked our plates. The potato pancakes were just incredible, if I do say so myself. I mean, how can you not like bacon?! For her part, The Dulcinea was as impressed as I. Her reaction:

"It was, bar none, the best meal I've had in a long, long time. More than a month. More than two, probably. Maybe the most exquisite of the year."

Stevie and Becca too were impressed. They were a bit hesitant, at first, as, while they'd never had pheasant previously, they did have duck and grouse and were none too impressed. Needless to say, after one bite, they took to the pheasant like a junkie to the needle and left the bones picked clean.