Top 10 Pheasant recipes: Pot Roast Pheasant with Fennel

By Prue Coats for The Field

Friday, 06 January 2012

The top 10 pheasant recipes. Country chef Prue Coats selects her top pheasant recipes for The Field.

Pot Roast Pheasant with Fennel

Serves 4

■ Salt and pepper
■ 2 pheasants
■ 70g (21⁄2oz) butter
■ 1 onion, peeled and diced
■ 4 fennel bulbs, trimmed and quartered
■ 150ml (5fl oz) Pernod

Not everyone likes aniseed but the fennel in this recipe seems to melt and go buttery and sticky, making a mouth-watering combin-ation. It came about when I had an excess of fennel bulbs in the fridge. If you don't have Pernod, use martini, vermouth or a dry sherry.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Salt and pepper the pheasants. Brown them in butter in a flameproof, cast-iron casserole. Set aside, then brown the onion lightly.

Add the pheasants, breast up, and pack the fennel pieces tightly around them. Season well, then pour in the alcohol. Put on the lid and place in the oven for 11⁄2 hours if the pheasants are young and two if old.

This goes well with a tomato, feta and olive salad and new potatoes with butter and chopped dill.

Pheasant recipes: The top 10

Pheasant Guidwife

Parmesan pheasant breasts with crispy ham

Pheasant Normandy

Pheasant and vegetable stir-fry with a black bean sauce

Pot roast pheasant with Fennel

The best pheasant stock and soup ever

Perfect roast pheasant with white wine and charlotte potatoes

Pheasant "Prueski"

Gennaro's pheasant

Devilled pheasant