Faisan à la Régence

Faisan à la Régence (pheasant in the Régence style) teaches one true thing before you touch a pan: poêling, a covered butter-roast, is not braising. No stock touches the pheasant while it cooks. The bird concentrates in butter first, then the stock extracts those browned juices afterward for the Salmis, a reduced game sauce scented here with truffle essence.

The original assumed a saucier tending the reduction, brown stock never off the fire, and spare hands shaping game quenelles and grooving mushrooms. The larded wrapping and constant brigade basting were scaffolding; the covered-casserole method in Poëlings (No. 250), concentrated unsalted stock, and a food processor give one home cook the honest equivalents. A salamander adds nothing here because uncovering the casserole colors the bird. We keep the low croûton, the three alternating garnishes, and the separate sauceboat because those are the dish. One cook, one stove, one evening.

When it reaches the table, the pheasant should be burnished and upright on its butter-fried bread, surrounded by pale truffle-marked quenelles, glossy fluted mushrooms, and delicate cocks’ kidneys. The decisive step is this: do not moisten the pheasant as it cooks; stock enters only afterward, when it captures the butter-borne savor for the Salmis sauce.