Pheasant ''Cacciatore'' hunter's style.

How is pheasant cooked? 

Have you ever tried the cacciatore pheasant?

Cacciatore pheasant, very simple recipe but prepared very carefully, with many ingredients to make this meat very tasty and a long cooking. The pheasant is part of a category of meat often underwhelmed, but if well cooked it can be a really good dish, perfect if combined with a good plate of polenta, but if you do not have or do not have the time, opt for a slice of bread possibly rustic and homemade to make the scarpetta. I prepared the pheasant several times but I still had not written any recipe, since I was lucky enough to have one in my hands again, I could not not write one immediately.

You have just finished your tasty pasta cooked al dente, and there it lies on your plate: a whole layer of delicious sauce. How could you leave it there, wasted, to be thrown away? Impossible! is the answer many Italians would give to such a question: this is why we love the scarpetta and cannot quite avoid doing it. This word can hardly be translated in other languages except if using a whole definition of the action itself: in Italy, the idiomatic expression fare la scarpetta is understood everywhere, but the origins of it are still unknown. Some would say that the word scarpetta recalls a type of pasta used in the 19th century in Tuscany, others say that it is linked to the idea of a little shoe, literally, a scarpetta, taking everything under its sole and cleaning the plate; others still say that it is linked to the Southern Italian word “scarsetta,” meaning poverty. In spite of its relatively old origins, the word only appeared in the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana in 1987.

This is something that not every foreigner can understand. In itself, the act is simple: it’s just dipping some bread in the leftovers of whatever one has just finished eating. For we Italians, however, there is a whole world behind this habit, and diatribes on whether it is polite or not to do it have been going on since times immemorable: should we or should we not do the scarpetta at the end of a good meal?

After centuries of discussions and thousands of people debating should it be avoided when dining formally,  or embraced fully as a righteous manner to conclude a fantastic meal, it has been eventually decided that doing it is not so much of a problem anymore.

I want to clarify a few things:

– the pheasant I had was frozen, already cleaned and gutted;

– once thawed I preferred to break it to marinate it better;

– I used red wine.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 pheasant

1 onion

2 carrots

1 celery rib

1 clove Garlic

500 g Tomato pulp

150 ml Red wine

Extra virgin olive oil

Rosemary

Bay leaves

Sage

Cloves of garlic to taste

Salt 

Preparation

First check that the pheasant is perfectly clean and does not have small thin feathers, for safety I advise you to pass it in the flame so as to be perfect. At this point, cut it into fairly small pieces, in this way it will turn out even tastier. Heat a pot with a thick bottom, pour a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and the pheasant in pieces, brown it well, until it is perfectly golden. Prepare all the vegetables (garlic, onion, carrots, celery), wash and chop finely, add them to the meat and brown those too. When everything is perfectly browned, add the wine, let it evaporate, then add the tomato pulp and the necessary salt. Wash a sprig of rosemary, 2/3 sage leaves and 2/3 bay leaves, tie them all together with string and add them to the pot, crush 2/3 juniper berries, pour those too and mix everything well, lower the heat and put the lid, continue cooking for about two hours, but keep it controlled and add half a glass of water if and when necessary. At the end of cooking, the meat must be tasty and tender, excellent if served with a side of polenta or toasted bread for the famous scarpetta.