Traditional roast young grouse with Irish bacon, game chips, Cumberland sauce, Madeira wine sauce and bread sauce. Support your local game dealer, try something different, and a great date dish or a Sunday roast with a difference. Wonderful looking and tasting English dish - fiddly, but not hard or time-consuming, to make but looks and tastes amazing. Single forumers may wish to note that this makes about as good a meal for entertaining a Sharon as possible. Guaranteed result, unless you're Bert.
You will need (to serve two):
Like all ISK recipes, a good bottle of claret. Not for cooking. Drink a large glass, then amass the following.
a brace of oven-ready grouse, laced with bacon (and before anyone starts, there WILL be a game dealer near you, probably the best butcher in the area. Shouldn't be expensive. Really nice meat, used to be common. Good to think you're supporting rural businesses too. Make SURE the grouse are young, else it dunt work).
flaked sea salt.
Game chips (can be hard to find outside swanky grocers' shops, but any suitably neutral-tasting posh crisp will do at a pinch. Nothing too salty or flavored though. You could buy 'em on-line at somewhere like Fortnum's but all being well your game dealer will sell them so can pick 'em up with the birds. Yellow Pages will have the answers. Let your fingers do the walking).
milled white pepper.
30g soft unsalted butter.
one cup of Madeira wine.
one cup of good chicken stock.
5g of diced, cold, unsalted butter.
a few rosemary and thyme leaves.
watercress.
90ml of bread sauce (see later for recipe).
90ml of Cumberland Sauce (buy it from a shop, easier).
Method:
Preheat your oven to 220 degrees or gas mark 7.
Season the birds inside and out with salt and pepper.
Push the herbs inside the birds after seasoning, then brush the breasts (shurrup at the back) with soft butter.
Place in a hot pan with some dripping and seal both sides of the grouse until they're golden brown all over.
Place them in the oven and roast for about 15 minutes. Shouldn't take longer coz you bought YOUNG birds...right? aste them every so often during tis time. They should end up medium rare. Nothing wrong with well done meat normally, I like a charred steak myself, but game birds should NEVER be well done. They taste shit see? So, medium-rare.
When they cooked take them out of the pan and let them rest in a warm place, but then return the pan to the heat, adding the Madeira and the chicken stock, bring it to the boil and let it thicken.
Add some chilled and diced butter and whisk the sauce gently until the butter has thickened and enriched it. Then, and this is, as Jennifer Aniston would say, the science bit, pass it through a fine strainer (a sieve is prolly too fine, so borrow one from a woman, who will have one).
Place the grouse in your serving dish, top with two piece of grilled bacon each (a cross atop the bird looks nice).
Place the watercress (which you've washed RIGHT?) in the base of the bird and gently spoon the Madeira sauce over it.
Serve with bread sauce and Cumberland Sauce.
Bread Sauce:
You'll want:
one small onion, peeled and chopped
one bayleaf
550ml of full fat milk
three cloves (whole ones mind)
100g of fresh white breadcrumbs (posh bread is a disaster - Mother's Pride is perfect)
60g of unsalted butter
some nutmeg
a pinch of English mustard powder (Coleman's is ace - but DON'T use mustard itself coz it dunt work).
Method
Cook the chopped onion in a small amount of butter until it softens, but don't let it colour.
Add the bayleaf, milk and cloves, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 10 mins.
Remove from the heat and allow the flavours to infuse for another 10 minutes (yes, I did just say that you cunts).
Pass the whole thing through a sieve and then bring back to the boil, adding the breadcrumbs (more you add, the thicker it gets. Not rocket science etc).
Whisk it all up, chuck in a small piece of butter and season with the mustard powder, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
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