pheasant

[livarot]

erm... so i was told it was farmed. i still got shot pellets. plus, the bird is either really hairy/feathery, or it got hit with lots of shot, most of which passed through, because even the meat had feather bits. i was half grossed out. i was also worried because it smelled (raw) like a tamer version of grouse. but fortunately, cooked, it was ok

Comments

[sahn]

That's some pretty adventurous cooking. I've never tried cooking a bird that's not chicken... or cooking anything that had been shot

[livarot]

yeah, but i think if you have too much flour (and not enough liquid), then you still get a bit of the floury flavor, even if you do it roux style. because i made the roux, but i didn't add enough liquid afterwards. and i think if your liquid isn't strongly enough flavored, the flour flavor still comes through. the flour was pretty cooked. but i added milk as the liquid. today, i added bacon water & pheasant/duck broth. so it had a stronger flavor

[livarot]

three cups chicken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanbeiji

[sahn]

I didn't realize you had made the flour into a roux. I thought you just did a simple substitution (e.g. mix flour with water and add it to the sauce).

Somehow with poultry I feel less adventurous. Maybe it's because Alton Brown hasn't done any Good Eats episodes with game birds.

I've never tried making pork belly either. What is that? Uncut and uncured bacon?

[sahn]

This is the recipe that I used. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sawmill-gravy-recipe/index.html

Not saying that this is the recipe that you should use, but just thought that it might be a reasonable starting point for how to cook the flour before adding the liquid, and how much flour to use for how much liquid.

[livarot]

i kinda eyeball it, but as demonstrated with the pheasant, occasionally, i eyeball wrong. as you pointed out, it thickens when it hits the table. i thought i had thinned it out enough (when i added the (generous) splash of wine, it became almost runny)

i've seen that recipe before. i forget what i was looking for. one thing they don't mention in the recipe but they mention in the wiki article, it helps to have warmed liquids. before, i'd either nuke it or heat liquids in a pan on the stove. when i'm lazy, and i make it in my cast iron, i just put it on high heat, and i scrape aside part of the roux, pour the cold milk on the cast iron, wait until it heats up a bit before mixing.