Pheasant Fricassissi a la Mark Newman

PHEASANT FRICASSISSI

Alright, here it is pheasant fricassissi:

You wake up the dog, get a gun, preferably a 12 guage shotgun, but any kind may do (SKS leaves very little meat, but they don't crawl away very fast). You walk up the hill into the grassy area. When the dog stops, goes in circles, he wants to take a dump -- don't interfere. He will then lift a leg on the corner post, again, step upwind. When his nose starts snuffing like an air compressor and his stubby tail vibrates, he will "lock up" on a bird soon. Pop the bird, stuff in pouch, and get home.Clean the bird (a misnomer, since they look pretty clean before you start this process and they are a bloody mess when you are done).Filet the breast meat. To do this you hold the bird in your left hand with the brest upwards and the legs hanging toward your belly.you take a sharp boning knife (if you don't know what one is GOOGLE IT!) and start to slice along the center of the breast. The knife will slide along one side or the other of the center hangy-down bonelike thing, then, turn the knife as you saw with it so that it glides along the ribs and under the "armpit." Then, slice very shallow cuts along each side of the wishbone. Next, cut around the wing bone and loosen the boneless piece of meat.do the other side.Lay it on a cutting board and liberally cut out all shot meat, be liberal! No one likes feathers in thier food or shot. Now, there are some tendons which need to be stripped from the meat. Use your common sense and a sharp knife and strip the white, membranes out of there, just the major ones.Cut into bite sized pieces. ALso, you can get a piece or two from the wings and ther are a couple of pieces you can scoop out of the pelvis area which are the size of oysters.Save teh thighs and legs for boiling and for "Pheasant salad sandwich meat." --Later.Now take two bowls about 10 inch diameter. In one bowl, put about a cup of flour per breast, a good big shake or three of Lawy Lawyer You know, that seasoning salt in the orange shaker (I keep calling it "LAWYER'S SEASONING SALT" but that isn't right!). You can also put in a crumbled cracker or two, some corn meal or about any favorite seasoning, garlic for you, Hambone! Put about a 1/4 inch of olive oil in a large skillet and turn it on high. Put all the pieces in a bowl with one egg and a bit of water per breast and whip the egg and water first. Get your hands in it, coat all the pieces, and grab handfuls of them and sort of shake off the excess and then throw them in the flour mix bowl. Stir them around till they are all coated. You can use a paper bag instead of a bowl but I had one break open once.Then, layer the skillet with the pieces and they should sizzle for a while, then, turn them over like a large funnel cake. They will break apart some, that is OK since you are going to break them apart after the other side is browned, anyway.After you turn them, then turn the heat way down and cover them with a lid , nbot totally covered or they get too soggy.With practice, you can go from "Bird in dog's mouth" to "Fricassissi on plate" in about 30 minutes. Really good stuff. I have had people tell me they don't like pheasant, but I have NEVER had anyone tell me they don't like this!(I have been known to tell people it is simply Chicken McNuggets, though if you knew the truth, you probably would run away from anything which is called a Nugget unless it is found in a gold mine)Let me know if you like this!!!