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Pheasant in Sauerkraut
I BRACE YOUNG PHEASANT OR PARTRIDGE 2 SLICES BACON CUT THICK 3 TABLESPOONS FAT OR BUTTER I ONION, CHOPPED I QUART SAUERKRAUT SALT PEPPER Salt birds lightly, pepper well. Lightly brown in fat with bacon and onion. Take out birds and bacon, add sauerkraut and heat; season with pepper. Make a bed of sauerkraut in bottom of earthenware pot or baking dish. Lay in birds and bacon. Smother with remaining sauerkraut, cover, seal tight with flour and water paste, and bake in heated pit at least 2 hours.
A bean-hole recipe: the sealed pot goes into a stone-lined pit of embers and stays there. It adapts cleanly to a covered oven, but a few of the quantities and terms need translating first.
- A braceTwo birds. Two whole pheasants of about 2 to 2 1/2 lb each will feed four people; partridges are much smaller and you would want four to six of them.
- Young birds onlyThe recipe specifies young; an old cock pheasant tends to be sinewy and dry. Most pheasant sold today is farmed and young, but a wild bird of unknown age benefits from the full two hours rather than the minimum.
- Oven equivalentA fired bean hole holds a moderate, slowly falling heat for hours; the recipe itself gives no temperature. In a conventional oven, bake covered at 325F for 2 to 2 1/2 hours; the meat is done at 165F at the thigh, but the collapse of the sauerkraut into the birds is the point of the dish, so do not pull it early.
- The flour-and-water sealA stiff luting paste of flour and water pressed around the lid rim, not something to eat. It traps steam in a pot that has no gasket and it crackes off in a sheet after baking. A tight Dutch oven or a double layer of foil under the lid does the same job.
- The sauerkrautA quart runs to about 2 lb with its brine, less once drained. Drain it and taste before adding salt; the bacon brings its own. Reserve a little of the brine to add back if the pot looks dry at the halfway mark.
- Salt the birds lightlyDeliberate, and worth respecting. Two hours sealed with bacon and brined cabbage will season the meat thoroughly on its own. Heavy pepper is what the recipe wants instead.
- Bacon cut thickSlab bacon, cut about 1/4 inch. Thin supermarket rashers render away to nothing during the browning and contribute no fat to the pot.
- ServingLift the birds out whole, joint them at the table, and spoon the kraut and pan juices over. Boiled potatoes or dark bread absorb the liquor; the dish makes no sauce of its own.