My dad has been doing a lot of hunting lately and bringing home fresh pheasants.  We have made an excellent French recipe called Braised Pheasant with Red Cabbage and Chestnuts several times this season.  It is so good my friend wanted to serve it for her Thanksgiving Dinner.
Consistent with my annual theme of using what I have on hand, thereby avoiding trips to the store, and saving time and energy , I decided to create my own recipe.  The end result I was after –hot sandwiches.  My family is getting burned out on pheasant and I wanted to make what we were eating less obvious.
Here is a terrific recipe I created yesterday.  Everyone loved it.
Two pheasants stuffed with button mushrooms, cloves of garlic, bay leaf, salt, fresh sage and parsley and black pepper.
Brown the birds in rendered duck fat in a cast iron skillet (yes my friends, this is the same duck fat you ate on New Year’s Eve; it’s still good!)
Bake at 350 for an hour
Cool and strip the meat from the bones (this is where I check carefully for any bb’s that may be in the meat)
Mix with mayonnaise, just like making tuna, check seasonings.
Now for the open face sandwiches….
butter one side of dark bread (I like the German style bread made by Beckman’s); put a mound of pheasant meat mixture on top and heat on the griddle, adding freshly grated Gruyere cheese on top; put under the broiler to melt the cheese.  Serve with arugula and a steak knife.  Yummmm!