Experimentation led my daughter, Brooke, and me to a delicious creation we christened "Pheasant, OMG!"
It is the tastiest wild game to ever grace our buds, and it also will work with wild turkey and venison.
Though rich and sweet, pheasant is very lean and prone to dryness, which detracts from its natural allure. Brooke and I resolved this deficiency by marinating the breasts, but we couldn't settle on one that educed the bird's natural palate.
So we invented one, sort of. It's based on a concoction Robert Silzer of Little Rock uses to marinate venison. It's a soy sauce and brown sugar mixture that makes venison taste like beef ribeye. Brooke and I enhanced it with a host of other ingredients.
The recipe is actually a three-part harmony that also involves a sauce and a stir fry accompaniment.
For the marinade, we used enough soy sauce to cover the meat in a pan and added brown sugar to the soy sauce to make a syrup of medium thickness. To that we added:
5 teaspoons of minced garlic from a jar, including the juice
Two pinches of oregano
1 tsp. of parsley
1 tsp. of lemon pepper, or five half-twists from a grinder
1 tsp. black pepper
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 pinch dill
Add meat and refrigerate for 24 hours. This will turn the meat dark red, like raw venison.
For the stir fry:
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 white onion, chopped
Chopped mushrooms or canned mushroom caps to taste
5 cloves of garlic, minced
Coat a skillet with extra virgin olive oil. Add meat and vegetables and stir fry at medium heat until the meat turns light brown.
For the fettuccine sauce, mix:
1 8-oz. pkg. of cream cheese
1½ cups half and half
Add garlic powder, salt, pepper, parsley and oregano to taste.
Beat with a whisk at medium heat until creamy.
The stir fry is excellent alone, or over wild rice or noodles. The initial sensation is a monolithic wall of flavor, but the elements separate distinctly with the first chew, and they continue to blossom in the aftertaste.
The fettuccine sauce was Brooke's idea. I resisted because I feared it would smother the flavor of the stir fry. Instead, it contributes a buttery richness that enhances the OMG element. Go easy on the sauce, though. A stripe across the top is sufficient.
Miss Laura strongly objects to the OMG thing because she says it takes the Lord's name in vain. Refuting this with Psalm 83:18 just got us into hotter water, but frankly, we are unable to find "gosh" anywhere in the Bible.
We ate it again two days later, after the pheasant had marinated for 72 hours. That was too long because the marinade flavor was excessive.
If anything, this production could be improved by softening the effect of the marinade. Next time, we'll soak our game for 10-12 hours instead of 24.
One asset of stir fry is that it is easy to make on a camp stove. Grilled hamburgers and hot dogs are camping staples, but a Wild Game OMG! serving will be a show stopper.
Sports on 10/02/2016