This recipe is my mothers. It’s rather nice and very easy. The sauce that comes from the pheasant, the calvados and the apple cooking in a clay pot is really quite addictive.

Ingredients

1. 1 Plucked Pheasant - about 750g in weight
   

2. 1/2 tsp Salt
   

3. 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
   

4. White Pepper
   

5. 60 g Butter + a little more
   

6. 1 kg Cooking Apples - not too sweet - Bramley for instance
   

7. 150 ml Double Cream
   

8. 200 ml Calvados
   

You’ll also need a Clay Pot with a lid

How to cook it

Preheat Oven to 200 degrees centigrade.

Wash the bird and pad it dry. Rub the inside with Salt and Black Pepper. Tie up the Pheasant with cotton twine and tie the legs together.

Separate the Apples in two portions.

Peel and slice the first portion of Apples in 5 mm slices and saute them lightly in the Butter in a pan.

Place the sautéed Apples in the bottom of a Clay Pot that has been butted on the inside.

Put more butter on the pan and brown the tied

up pheasant on all sides being careful not to miss any spots. Transfer the bird from the pan to the Clay Pot on top of the Apples after removing the cotton twine from the bird.

Discard a little of the butter from the pan if you

feel there’s too much. Add half of the Calvados to the pan. Scrape the bottom of the pan and simmer for a minute or two. Then poor the juices from the pan over the bird in the Clay Pot.

Add a little ground white pepper and poor the double cream into the Clay Pot. Then put on the lid and place in the hot oven for about 30 minutes.

Peel the rest of the Apples and cut them into quarters. Put them in the Clay Pot and continue cooking in the oven for another 30 minutes.

Add the rest of the Calvados to the Clay Pot 10 minutes before serving the bird.

Serve the bird in the Clay Pot.

To Serve

I recommend eating the bird, apples and sauce with some nice new small Charlotte Potatoes and some sautéed Wild Mushrooms. For wine choose a nice full bodies bottle of red wine perhaps from Burgundy.

Enjoy!