Cookery

A story I feel I simply must share. Some of you may have already heard it, or at least heard my tortured screams while working on it, but it's still a good story.

So the other night, I decided that I wanted to have some pheasant. But not just any pheasant- I wanted the real thing, from a real butcher. They have those here, you know. So I trotted down to McKanna Meats, a butcher shop that has regulars and is a family business and all that good stuff.

"Hello," I say. "I'd like a pheasant, please."

The clerk, a youngish fellow, looks me over, listens to me, and says "So, you know how to cook one then?"

I say "No idea. Like a chicken?"

And he says "Sort of," and then gives me instructions on the various ways to cook a pheasant. Then he asks me what size I want, I say small, he gives me a medium and charges me for a small, and I take my bird home to cook it. Now, I'd intended to roast the thing whole, like a small chicken, and stuff its cavity with a clove of garlic. So I go to wash out the cavity like you should, thinking it would be prepared like a regular chicken.

Plop.

A liver falls into my hand, swiftly followed by blood. It was like something out of your cheaper class of horror movie as I reached up into the bird and pulled out a heart, the lungs, a kidney... and so much blood. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.

Until I remembered.

Did I not spend a semester studying early modern butchering techniques? Did I not visit a traditional meat processing plant in order to learn the ways of those who cut up animals? Was I not a terrifically stubborn person? So, wrangling our least-porous cutting board, I took a boning knife and I butchered the bird in our kitchen. I slit the skin down the back and then peeled it away- there were still some feathers attached. I took off the legs and wings for soup- pheasants are terrifically stringy in those departments. (Side note: Although the soup turned into more of a gumbo, it is delicious.) I then split the bird down the middle. I had to take off the dark meat because I'd accidentally pierced some organ sacs and was worried that the meat had been contaminated. Then I split the breasts, rubbed a little olive oil on them, and grilled them. I had some leftover kidney beans, so I warmed those up, mixed in some black pepper and tomato sauce, and had the whole thing for dinner. 

Pheasant breasts, with a fork and knife for size comparison.

And it was amazing.