Pheasant ballottine

Last of the season from the nearby Overbury Estate.Quite a labour of love. When you're de-boning pheasants you also need to take out stray bits of shot too. And the legs have fine bones which also need to be removed. All these bones can be roasted and made into stock for the sauce.

It helps to have 2 people doing this - I was removing the main bones, legs and wings and Hannah was removing shot and the fine leg bones, and the removing the leg meat from the skin.

Leg meat was chopped, mixed with sage, onion, mix spice, prunes, few breadcrumbs to bind and rolled up.

FAQ - What does ballottine mean?

De-boned and rolled into a cylindrical shape with a stuffing in the middle.

Like this is looks much nicer plated up. Plus you get to use the bones for the sauce.

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Christmas lunch delivered chilled to your home on Christmas Eve or cooked and served by chef and waiting staff on Christmas Day

"Over here! You've got the wrong house!". Ho ho ho - the neighbours of the people we cook for on Christmas Day always have a sense of humour when we arrive, wherever it is!

View from kitchen door at the house we were cooking at on Christmas Day -

still very heavy frost at midday which never lifted!

It never seems like Christmas to me till the first lines of Once in Royal from Kings College. When I was young it would be on while I boxed up my homemade sweets for friends & family. This year I heard it on the way up the M5 back from delivering Christmas lunches in Bristol, on the way to more drops in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds before ending in Kidderminster to cook and serve a dinner party - quite the busiest ever Christmas Eve. The frost on the hills was so heavy it was almost like snow.

This year I had expanded the menu to make it a bit easier for people.

Game pie - more about this later - was served with celariac remoulade and homemade elderberry chutney from Delia at Dove Cottage who makes it from elderberries picked around the fields of Broadway. These are actually ones I made in November - the pace was so fast on Christmas eve there was little time for photos.

Smoked trout from Donnington trout farm. You can read more about those here.

Local pheasant (lots of pheasant shoots in the Cotswolds!).

Having run out of bacon I wrapped them in parma ham which I had while roasting - saves it from drying out - and stuffed them with 1/4 orange, 1/4 onion and some thyme. Once cooked I let them rest before de-boning and sat the parma ham underneath the pheasant breast & leg.

Turkey

We were walking with dinosaurs (top left) on Christmas Day itself - we cooked for a variety of ages from the 1 year old (top right) to grandparents. Deliveries (above) were made before cooking for a dinner party on Christmas Eve.

For the turkey I de-boned it to make a ballottine as last year. This makes the presentation much better. It was roasted on top of a potato trivet as ever with lemon, thyme, and this year I added cinnamon and crushed cardamon seeds. All the flavour of these infuses the turkey as it cooked. Once it had a bit of colour on it I added white wine to the roasting tin too - even more flavour, and also moisture.




The party we were cooking on Christmas Day had asked for cauliflower cheese rather than our roasted brussell sprouts so that's what we did. I was about to boil the cauliflower when I changed my mind and roasted it instead, like I did for the cauliflower in Cotswold Way ale sauce. Then once cooked topped it with cheese sauce & cheese and placed it back in the oven. Cooked like this you keep in all the flavour of the cauliflower rather than boiling it into the water which invariably you throw away. And glazed chantenay carrots (hiding underneath the turkey in pic above) replaced the creamed leeks and onions which we served for the delivery meals with the honey roast parsnips silver served.

As I had some cranberries left from making the pumpkin and cranberry bread rolls I put some in the stuffing for the turkey leg.

Parsnip and leek crumble for an all vegetarian delivery (there is something else than nut roast!). Roast celery, artichokes & white wine sauce in there too.

Getting Christmas pudding lit and into the room is always a bit of a rush. Never get a good photo (evidence below)......

Egg free chocolate brownie for the children (as one allergic to eggs) with homemade egg free ice cream.

Later on, after our own Christmas lunch (did actually stop - thanks to Gill and her mother), it was back to work to clear up and get ready for another busy day the next day (Boxing Day) and then onwards ever onwards to January 3rd.

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New Year 2008

Our busiest ever new year saw 4 events on New Years eve, and another to a regular customer delivered the day before, on the way to cooking for a group of 26 deep in to solving a murder mystery.

While my brother, Adam, was cooking at Upper Court, my New Year's eve was spent cooking in the luxury of Kempley Barns near Ross-on-Wye. As I was both cooking and serving, and had two options per course to contend with there was scarce time for photos, until desert time.

Starter

Seared scallops champagne with parsnip puree and sauce - as seen last year.

It is still one of my favourite dishes, and suits the luxury feel of new years eve so well. So they are served at their best the scallops are pan-fried as the guests have been seated.


Roast butternut squash risotto with toasted coconut and chilli -

Also as seen last year, but with an enhanced method. Instead of tinned coconut milk which I have used previously I used the coconut milk straight from the inside of the coconut used to make the dried cocnut flakes that go on top. This gave you a real coconut flavour, but a more savoury, and natural one. The remaining coconut that wasn't used to make crisps, I grated and added. Caribbeans use coconut as a savoury ingredient - almost like a vegetable, and that is what I did here, and it turned out very well - as reflected in the comments from the member of the party who had chosen it.

Risotto ingredients - roast butternut squash, chilli and coconut

Main Course

Breast of pheasant with cointreau and orange sauce served with dauphinoise potato, roast celeriac and french beans

An enhanced version of my own Christmas lunch which I cooked late on Christmas Day evening, after getting back from my Christmas lunch deliveries in London.

The pheasant is wrapped in streaky bacon to protect the breast meat. It is left to rest, bacon removed and then flashed back in the oven.

Cointreau sauce - As it happened, our delivery meal to Littleton Manor on the same day was coq au vin for 20, so I used some of the coq au vin sauce as a base for the pheasant. To see how that sauce is made see previous entry. For the pheasant sauce I added the roasting juices from the pheasant, cointreau and a little grated orange zest. This is possibly the most flavoursome sauce I have made to date. The left over pheasant carcass, and those from another party we were cooking for at Wellacres were used to make the stock used in the foie gras and chicken terrine a couple of days afterwards.

Loin of lamb with spinach and black pudding stuffing served with dauphinoise potato, roast celeriac and french beans -

An alterative version of our ever popular lamb dish

Dessert

Sticky toffee pudding with sticky toffee pecan sauce and Cotswold clotted cream

The most popular dessert again this year - an updated version of our previous presentation.

Pear and blackberry tart with crème anglaise

Related posts:

Foie gras and free range chicken terrine
New Year's Eve 2007
Other scallop dishes we have served
Sticky toffee pudding - tuile basket recipe
Pear and almond tart

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Pheasant for dinner

The new addition to the garden. You always hear them when you're out walking in the Broadway hills. But now there's one that comes visiting the garden every day.

Seeing pheasants hanging outside the butchers is quite the most amazing sight. It made for the most amazing Christmas Day lunch a few years ago. Starting early, I pulled the carrots out of the ground and put the pheasant in the oven on timer while we went out wakling up to Broadway tower - a Christmas Day tradition. It was cooked and resting by the time I got back. In went the roasties with some thyme and rosemary fresh from the herb garden. Next I cut the breasts off the bone, hacked up the bones and caramelised it all in the roasting tray, deglazed it with the night before's left over mulled wine and let that simmer down. Then glazed carrots and crushed parsnip finished it off.
So what does all this tell you? Pheasants make memorable meals. But not this one - this pheasant (in the photo above, taken through the window) is like the new garden mascot.

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