Recipe - Low and Slow Game Casserole

I'm quite happy to see more and more interesting and unusual cuts of meat in my local Waitrose. It seems that they are adding more game to their shelves as well, something I think is really good.

The other day they had a bit of a discount on Game Casserole packs. These packs contained diced pheasant, pigeon parttridge and mallard. The label stated that I could find cooking instructions on the other side. I guess that is true, they were just not very helpful.

All they basically said was to brown the meat, add some vegetables and stock and then cook it in the oven. The only measurements etc that was given was the temperature for the oven and the time needed to cook.

Needless to say, I wasn't too happy or impressed with those instructions. What I did was to look through some of my recipe books and then I also used some Google-Fu.

Then I took the various recipes I could find that I liked and mixed and matched things to get something to work with. This is what I came up with, you could use it as a good start for your own stew - just freestyle it to suit you and your taste.

Ingredients (serves 4)
2 x 340g Game Casserole packs
Salt
Pepper
Butter
4 slices of streaky bacon, cut into pieces
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
12 - 14 shallots, peeled and halved
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
20g dried porcini mushrooms, re-hydrated as per the instructions 
250 ml red wine
300 ml chicken stock

3 - 4 tbsp chopped curly leaf parsley.

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 160c.

Melt the butter on a medium heat in a oven safe casserole with a lid. Season the game well. Fry the game in batches until well browned on all sides. As it gets done, remove to a plate.

Once all the game has been fried and removed, add in the bacon, shallots and carrots and fry whilst stirring for about 5 minutes. Add in the thyme, porcini mushrooms, wine and chicken stock. Bring to a simmer and then remove from the heat.

Put the lid on the casserole and pop it into the oven. Cook in the oven for about 90 minutes or until cooked and well tender.

Once cooked, remove from the oven and stir in the parsley.

Serve with rice, mashed potato or as I did - with polenta fries.


Enjoy!