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Faisan à la Crème
Created by Chef Juliette
Whole pheasant cooked in butter with quartered onion, then basted under tangy cream until the bird is burnished and the sauce gleams ivory around it, ready for the table in its saucepan.
Faisan à la Crème (pheasant with cream) teaches one true thing: cream belongs in the final quarter of the cooking, when it can catch the bird's butter and juices without boiling itself into curds. Pheasant is lean, so the basting is not decoration. It is the dish.
The source entry assumes a young whole bird, a heavy saucepan, and a cook who can judge three-quarters done by touch. It calls for no saucier, stockpot, or salamander, and I won't invent them. For one cook, one stove, one evening, an instant-read thermometer replaces the practiced thumb, while a low oven gives the saucepan the steady heat a watchful burner once demanded. Its quarter pint of cream becomes a scant two-thirds cup, a direct household measure for the same one-bird proportion.
The thermometer and oven are useful scaffolding. The butter, quartered onion, late cream, continual basting, and service in the saucepan must stay, because they are Faisan à la Crème. Keep the cream below a hard simmer once it enters the pan. That is the step that decides everything.
Ingredients
young whole pheasant
Quantity
1 bird, 3 to 3 1/2 pounds (1.35 to 1.6 kg)
giblets removed
unsalted butter
Quantity
4 tablespoons (60 ml / 57 g)
medium yellow onion
Quantity
1 medium (about 7 ounces / 200 g)
peeled and quartered through the root
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| young whole pheasantgiblets removed | 1 bird, 3 to 3 1/2 pounds (1.35 to 1.6 kg) |
| unsalted butter | 4 tablespoons (60 ml / 57 g) |
| medium yellow onionpeeled and quartered through the root | 1 medium (about 7 ounces / 200 g) |
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