Pheasant Barley Soup

It's been a rough few days and my voice is only just coming back.  When I feel this way then soup is required.  I have plenty of things in the freezer for soup but they can wait.  Today I wanted to tend to those pheasant leftovers.

First, the stock:  I roasted the bones, some celery, carrots, and onion at 450 for almost an hour.  Then I boiled them in 6 pints of water, with bay, and a teaspoon each of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.  (No, I did not sing Scarborough Fair even once!)  This simmered for 3 hours and was strained.

Then, the soup:  I cut up more onion, celery and carrot, our mirepoix, and browned them in olive oil.  To this I added the leftover pheasant meat and browned that slightly as well.  Then I added the stock, whatever meat I could get off the bones, chopped up leftover green beans, a package of dried porcini mushrooms and, after a while, 3/4 cup of pearled barley.  This simmered until all the barley was split and much of the liquid was absorbed.  The soup was seasoned with salt and pepper at the end.

Served with biscuits and blackberries, it was a filling meal.  The 7 year old even ate some of the broth!  That is a WIN.

Christmas Eve Feast

Not the most attractive of posed shots;
I suppose we could have at least finished setting the table!

Merry Christmas!

This year I am working over the Christmas holiday so I did the overnight on the 23rd and will work overnight tonight.  That left Christmas eve and morning so we had our "feast" last night.  Tonight we will have macaroni and cheese, but homemade, at least!

I had wanted to roast a duck but we got to the store and there were no ducks.  There were pheasants, so we decided to try that instead.  I combined a few recipes I found on the net and roasted 2 very tasty pheasants.  Here's how:

First the pheasants were brined for about 6 hours.  To make the brine I boiled 4 cups of water, 1/2 cup kosher salt, 6 bay leaves, and 2 T. sugar together and then soaked the pheasants in that.  They were then taken out, dried, and set in the fridge until the next day.   Each was stuffed with a small onion, a quarter of an apple and some sage and then bacon was draped over the breasts.  Then the birds were trussed and roasted for 15 minutes at 500 degrees.  After that, I dropped the oven temperature to 325-350 (hard to tell since my oven isn't very accurate) and roasted them for an additional 60 minutes or so, until the meat thermometer said 150.  About halfway through, I drizzled them with maple syrup.

Once they rested for 15 minutes they were carved.  I served them with red bliss potatoes, purple potatoes, carrots and parsnips roasted with thyme and rosemary.

Now we have some leftover pheasant meat in the fridge and bones in the freezer and a plan to make stock or soup in the near future.  Maybe pheasant will work as well as duck for a variation of the turducken soup?