Buttermilk Fried Quail
If you like fried chicken, you’ll love fried quail. This is a Southern style recipe, where you marinate the quail in buttermilk, then fry it in a cast-iron pan. Pure Southern comfort food…
Partridges with Cranberries and Rosemary
This dish, inspired by Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson of Faviken, is nothing short of a revelation in its simplicity and in the technique of cooking the partridges. If you are an upland bird hunter, or like to eat Cornish hens or quail, you must read this.
Pheasant Normandy
There is something about the combination of poultry and apples that just sings. This dish, Pheasant Normandy, is loaded with apple flavor and is larded with butter and cream. It requires no special technique or esoteric ingredients — it’s pure comfort food, and all it asks of you is a little time.
General Tso’s Pheasant
There are a few must-have dishes in Chinese-American cuisine. General Tso’s chicken is one of them. Eating a plate of this is like eating crack: You will find yourself doing whatever it takes to eat more. You have been warned…
Smoked Pheasant
Done right, smoked pheasant can be the finest expression of this bird at the table. Smokey, juicy and a little sweet from a maple glaze, it’s a lot like those smoked turkeys you can buy for the holidays — only with fewer leftovers. Here’s how to do it.
On Hanging Pheasants
Hanging upland game birds is a lot like dry-aging beef: It concentrates and refines flavors, tenderizes meat and generally transforms a pheasant from a rather boring chicken into a bird fit for a king. Here’s how to do it safely.
Pheasant Peperonata
Peperonata is normally a side dish of sweet peppers, onions and tomato; it’s like an Italian stir-fry. It is a perfect dish for late fall, when everyone’s peppers come ripe. I boosted this recipe up to a main course by adding a little shredded poached pheasant breast. Clean, tasty and easy.
Pheasant Buffalo Wings
If you love buffalo wings made from chicken, all it takes to do this with pheasant wings is a little bath in some nice stock. This, my friends, is wild game football food.
Grouse Salad with Barley and Tomatoes
Another good recipe for the dog days of August: Grouse salad with Sungold tomatoes and barley. It’s meant to be eaten warm or at room temperature, on the porch at sunset, beer in hand.
Grilled Quail, South Carolina Style
Quail are one of the best game birds for the grill, and respond well to either high heat grilling or slow-and-low barbecue. Here I barbecue them slowly, basted with a South Carolina-style mustard sauce.
