Transcript for On The Wing Podcast Ep. 341: Pretzel-Crusted Pheasant Cutlets with QF Editor Ryan Sparks
Speaker 1 (00:50)
Welcome to On The Wing, podcast presented by Purina Pro Plan. All right, we're in December now, and we're starting to hit that intersection of hunting season, the holidays, and wild game feasts. So I'm excited to deliver the first of a two-part set of snackable shorter podcasts focused on a recipe, each one of these podcasts is going to be a recipe from Quail Forever Journal Editor Ryan Sparks paired with a Passalacqua and Quail Forever Colab Wine. Up first on today's episode, Ryan is going to walk us through a savory pheasant dish paired with Passalacqua's Quail Forever White Fiano wine and that recipe is pretzel crusted pheasant cutlets with apple cream sauce and spaetzle. Sounds awesome. We're going to dive deep into how to create that terrific recipe. And if you're looking at social media and see the photos, I'm sure your mouth is watering because I got the photo right up in front of me too. Before we get rolling, I want to thank once again, Purina Pro Plan, the national dog food sponsor of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, and the presenting sponsor of On the Wing podcast. My pups have always eaten Purina Pro Plan, not just because Purina supports the wildlife habitat conservation mission of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, which is incredibly important to me and it should be important to you as well. But the most important element of Purina Pro Plan is that they have the team of world's best scientists and nutritionists behind their dog food. Pro Plan was created for the working bird dog like yours and like mine. You can learn more at ProPlanSport.com. Ryan, thanks for not only joining me, but for giving me some terrific inspiration as we dive into these two podcasts for wild game feasts around the holidays. I've always held, Meredith and I, my wife have always held sort of a pheasant feast is what we called it. It doesn't mean it's exclusively pheasant. It's just pheasant and grouse and quail and venison around the holidays. Do you do something like that as well?
Speaker 2 (03:28)
Yeah, we'll mix in some wild game. You know, we have some people every once in while our family that are a little, you know, they, they want to keep the wild game at an arm's length. I don't know why, but, so we'll mix it in along with some more traditional stuff for the holidays too.
Speaker 1 (03:41)
We started at pheasant feast when we were dating Meredith and I, and it was partly to introduce some people that wanted to keep wild game at arm's length. weren't like some friends of ours that weren't real - they were a little nervous, you know, they, they're maybe curious, but nervous about the flavors and, you know, being able to create like 12 different dishes, you know, from very mild, like pheasant dishes and ruffed grouse too. Yeah, a little bit gamier, sharp tails or woodcock. So they could sort of progress throughout the evening as the wine flowed. You get a little bit more adventurous as the wine goes down. yeah, it's funny after a couple of years, we always had a vote at the end, like what was the favorite dish. And after a couple of years, it became the woodcock and the sharptail, the more flavors are what people really enjoy.
Speaker 2 (04:40)
It's funny how that happens. Yeah, we recently did a big dinner with my friends and family, people that helped us move back to Nebraska. And we did a bunch of different meats, but, you know, it was funny. The ones that were kind of the hit across the board was the venison loin and the, you know, all the wild game ones across, even with the people, like my mom, typically she doesn't want anything to do with deer. And her favorite thing of the whole night was, was the deer that we grilled and did a little balsamic glaze on the top of it. it's fun.
Speaker 1 (05:13)
Yeah, I love that. celebrates the hunt and you relive memories. And speaking of reliving memories, another thing that I think you and I share is when you put a bird in the freezer. Yeah, know carp does this too, kind of marks on his freezer bag where that bird came from. And as I pull a bird out of the freezer, I think back to the day where that bird was taken, what the dog did. As we approach the beginning of your recipe here for pretzel crusted pheasant cutlets, do you have a story to tell about the pheasant that was used as the inspiration for this recipe?
Speaker 2 (05:57)
Yeah, so you're right. do when I can. It's not always feasible. When I can, I like to label my bags with kind of as much detail as I can, just shorthand where it was at the date. Sometimes I'll put if there was something memorable about it, I'll kind of sketch that on the vacuum seal bag. And the reason I do that is because when we sit down to dinner, you know, we say a little prayer. And then after that, I like to just kind of like remember the hunt. Like it's so cool to say this was well, the story of this bird.
You know, it was on my family's ranch in South Dakota and it was with my dad. And we had just gotten the first snowfall of our trip while we were there in December. So was kind of a late season hunt. We were about halfway down this fence line and up goes a pheasant and my dad shot it and just, yeah, great memory. It's fun to be able to tell those stories at the table. And sometimes you're eating with the people that you were hunting with and like, I remember that bird now.
Speaker 1 (06:52)
I love it. Yeah, I love that. That's one of the, it enriches the meal. It deepens the connection to.
Speaker 2 (06:58)
Brings it full circle.
Speaker 1 (07:00)
Absolutely. It does. You think about the place and the people and the dogs and it enriches that flavor. Every single element of the flavor. All right. We're going to talk about this dish. Want to also thank Onyx, a proud partner of On the Wing podcast. Also a proud partner of our Path Program, Public Access to Habitat Program, which has already opened up 100,000 acres of high quality habitat on private lands in South Dakota and Nebraska. New this year in North Dakota, Oklahoma and in Michigan, Onyx is helping to make a real boots on the ground impact for all of us as bird hunters. If you want the best tool in your vest and you want to help support the mission of creating public access, use the code PFQF at the Onyx link in the show notes. You'll get 20% off your Onyx membership and Onyx will make a donation back to our Habitat mission. All right. We are going to talk about pretzel crusted pheasant cutlets with apple cream sauce and spaetzle.
Speaker 2 (08:14)
It's a mouthful
Speaker 1 (08:15)
It's a mouthful!
Speaker 2 (08:17)
It's also delicious.
Speaker 1 (08:20)
It looks delicious. It screams Oktoberfest. next to, we were going to talk about wine pairing. It also feels like you got to have a pint of beer, you know, maybe a nice German beer next to it. It just feels like autumn. So tell me about the inspiration for this dish.
Speaker 2 (08:39)
But you kind of hit it. It's like peak fall. was wanting a cutlet. You think fall, think pretzels and apples. And my wife had just got back from the orchard down here that's got some apples. And so we had some fresh apples and pheasant because I just got back from a Minnesota pheasant trip. if anybody's not familiar with what Spaetzle is, it's basically like little tiny German Dumplings and they come together really quickly and they're, they're very easy to make. The only Hurdle I would say to making them is that you can do it without a spaetzle maker But I would really suggest getting one. They're like ten bucks online and they make it so much easier I tried to make these when I was in college without one and just you can you can try to get by with a colander and kind of pour your .. It's like a batter through the colander and let it drip down into the boiling water, but you just make a huge mess. So I would recommend picking one of those up. And if you've never had spaetzle, it's like, having never eaten pasta before or something. like, it's like a whole never having rice. It's like a whole nother, you know, starch to go with your protein. If you've never had it before. I just, love them. So you can either start by making your pheasant cutlets or you can start by making your spots. Well, it doesn't really matter which one if you make the cutlets first I like to throw them in a warmed oven just to keep them warm while you do everything else make this bottle first You just kind of keep that on a burner on the low or you could also put it in in the oven on low.
But here I started with the cutlets which is just pheasant breasts You could use as many pheasants as you want and scale this up or down I used, you know two pheasants. So I got four breasts off of them. You just start by kind of pounding those breasts thin so that they fry up evenly. You don't have the big lobe end and the narrower end. So you just get them flat.
Speaker 1 (10:35)
You use a meat mallet?
Speaker 2 (10:37)
Yeah, I do. I've got a, it's got a, it can unscrew. It's heavy. The head unscrews and one side it's got teeth and one side it's flat. And for something like this, I like to use the flat side. You don't like have to like really whap it because it'll just tear up the breast. You just want to like lightly tap like you're knocking on a door or something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:59)
Hank Shaw taught me how to use a meat mallet and he always put saran wrap over the meat and then you tap on the saran wrap so it doesn't rip apart the bird.
Speaker 2 (11:12)
Yeah, that's a great tip. That's a great tip. You know, a piece of parchment paper would also work. You know, whatever you've got. so then you've got your, you know, your pheasant cutlets in this, in this case where they're, where they're thin. And then I sort of set up a breading station. So I have, you know, a little flat dish with flour in it. And then next to that, a little flat dish with, some beaten eggs with little splash of milk in there to thin them out. And then finally, and kind of one of the secrets to this recipe, not really a secret, but what makes it really good is the pretzels. And you can use any pretzel. I've actually used the, for a different recipe, the dots pretzels, brushed up in bread. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which would go great with, with pheasant as well. But for this one, I really like the, pretzel chips or crisps. They're, I don't know if you've seen them, they're really thin. They're like made for like dipping and stuff like that. You can throw them in a blender, food processor, blitz them up into sort of a not like really fine breadcrumb, but kind of a nice chunky. I mean, look at the photo. You can tell kind of the size of what I blitzed them up into. Or you could just put them in a plastic bag and just hit it with your fist and break it up with your hands.
Speaker 1 (12:27)
It definitely reminds me of, I've seen recipes with fish, you know, with corn flakes or different cereals that are battered like this, a very similar presentation.
Speaker 2 (12:39)
Yeah, way that they, so the way that they're flat, the way that they kind of stick on the cutlet and jut out at different angles, it just keeps it really crispy and that crunch comes through and that pretzel kind of yeasty taste stays with it too through the frying. Nice. It's really nice. Then you can just, so you got your cutlets breaded and then you just fry them. You can, fried them in canola oil. You could use peanut oil.
You know, my grandmother fried everything in lard. I still like to fry things in lard every once in a while, especially a fish fry. This would be fantastic. Fry it in lard until they, and you fry them until they get to that nice like golden, crispy cutlet color that you want. And then I just transfer them either to a plate lined with paper towels, or you could put it on a baking dish with a wire rack. And that'll help the cutlets from steaming and keep them nice and crispy.
Then just pop them in the oven on just a warm setting and they'll actually stay nice and crispy for a long time You don't have to rush through this recipe at all You know then ideally you've got your spots all which in this case spots. it's just it's flour I'd like to put some fresh nutmeg in mine a couple eggs some cream some buttermilk some salt. That's it you kind of mix that up it'll b...
I like to think of it like the texture of the batter will be like a little bit thicker than melted ice cream. and then I load that you get, you get a pot of water boiling and that spaetzle maker will make actually like almost clamps on the top of your pot. you put that in there and then the spaetzle maker has like a little hopper that slides back across it and the dough drops down through there and then it cooks very quickly. basically as soon as it starts to float, I'll take a strainer or a slotted spoon and scoop them out and put them into a little glass bowl in case you need to transfer to the oven to keep it warm. And then just working in batches until you have all your Spaetzle made. That's it. I do like to toss a little butter in with the Spaetzle and it keeps it from sticking and it's also butter. that's not going to...
Speaker 1 (14:54)
Butter, lard ... this is like a health food.
Speaker 2 (14:58)
Oh, yeah. I'm not afraid of fat. Yeah, this is wonderful. Yeah, some healthy fats. Absolutely. Absolutely. you know, the finished dish is rich, but it's not like crazy over the top rich. Like it's a, I don't know, you feel good after you eat it. You don't feel like, I just ate like ton of just fried dough or something, you know? No, not a gut bomb. And there's some fruit in it, which is the apple cream sauce. So.
Super food is what they say.
You know, that's just when I, when I fry my cutlets, I'll leave like just enough to leave a little sheen of oil at the bottom of that, of that cast iron pan, which is what I like to fry in, throwing a little butter. I minced up a shallot for this recipe. You could totally just use a small onion. You just don't want to have too much of it. So maybe like, you know, a quarter of a small onion shallots are very small. you could also use a little bit of a red onion if you wanted to. we had some ever crisp apples, you don't want something that's like, you don't want like a mealy apple or a super sweet soft apple. want kind of an apple that when you bite into it, it really has like a crunch and a ...
Yeah, honey crisp would be great. You know, could use like a Granny Smith. You know, I would lean more towards like the honey crisp. Ours is the Evercrisp are a little bit more dense than a honey crisp, but you want that denseness so it just doesn't turn to mush when you cook it. You know, you want it to have a little bit of structure. I throw those in and cook them. And then some fresh thyme. You could also use dried thyme.
just use a little bit less dried time than you would the fresh variety. then you can put in, I make my own, stock at all the wild game that I, that I hunt. I think we'll probably get more into the stock making process on our next snackable, podcast. So people should tune in for that. You could also just use chicken stock. I use my pheasant stock. I think that homemade stock and having pheasant stock in a sauce that's going on pheasant and just builds those layers of that awesome pheasant flavor. You're going to deglaze the pan with that stock and then just let that thing rip and reduce and reduce and reduce and reduce by about half. And then you're to put in some heavy cream. I throw in some Dijon mustard and then just a little bit of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. And that just kind of gives it a a brightness or an acidity. There's only like a teaspoon in there. So it's not like it's going to taste like vinegar. Honestly, you probably wouldn't notice it's there, but there's a, I forgot to, we've made it again since, and I forgot to put the cider vinegar in at the end. And my wife was like, there's something just a little different. we went and splash it in like, yeah, there it is. you know, taste it for salt and pepper. And then, as people can see in the photo, you know, I just, slice some apple real thin and put that on top. So you have that fresh apple with the cooked apple. And, that's a hell of a fall meal to celebrate a pheasant and fall for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:17)
Yeah, it looks absolutely fabulous. I point people towards the photo of it that we're displaying on social media. The final element is what we wash it down with.
Speaker 2 (18:30)
Maybe what we drink while we're cooking it too.
Speaker 1 (18:34)
Yeah, you can, maybe a two bottle, two bottle recipe. Thanks to Passalacqua. Now available for the holidays, there's a special Quail Forever and Passalacqua wine pair wild gift pack available. It includes both Quail Forever collaborative wines, the white and the red, a set of Yeti wine tumblers, and Onyx Premium Membership, and the recipe cards for both of the snackable podcasts, this pretzel crusted pheasant cutlets with apple cream sauce and Spaetzle, and our next podcast coming up, quail in red wine and mushroom sauce, recipe cards for both of these are part of the Passalacqua holiday pack.
A limited number of these holiday gift packs are available at Passalacqua with two S's, pasalacquawinery.com backslash quail dash forever. Price is 150 bucks and get in there before they run out. You can order your bottles of quail forever white and quail forever red in time for the holidays.
All right. This recipe, pretzel crusted pheasant cutlets with apple cream sauce is paired with what, Ryan?
Speaker 2 (20:08)
And that would be with our Passalacqua Quail Forever Fiano, which is a very, good pairing with this, I would say, for a couple reasons. One, the Spaetzle and the pheasant cutlet are, you know, it's a fried cutlet, so it's rich. It's got a little bit, I mean, pheasant's not fatty, but just the frying process is, you know, there's a little bit of fattiness to it. There's butter and cream and buttermilk in the Spaetzle. And so it is a rich dish.
and I think, the Fiano, you know, there's, there's a couple of ways you can pair wine and it would be, you can contrast the flavor of what you're eating it with, which would, I would say what we're doing in this dish, or you could compliment it or match it, which is what I would say we're going to do on the next podcast with the red. so this is really nice because you take a couple of bites of the pheasant cutlet, the Spaetzle and then you take a sip of the Fiano, kind of.
You know, it has like a bright acidity to it. it kind of cleanses your palate. Yeah. Exactly. And also it's not like a Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. A lot of times they're lighter bodied where the Fiano has a little bit more body to it. And it's just, it's nice and it holds up to that cutlet. I just think it's a, it is a great pairing. I could, I'm like drooling right now just thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (21:38)
I really, you know, I started, got both bottles, right? The red and the white. And then I went back and I ordered six more of the white. I liked the red, but the white, the Fiano is just fabulous.
Speaker 2 (21:48)
Both really great. is a kind of a unique variety that people probably haven't heard of Fiano. I know I hadn't until I was introduced to Passalacqua. And now it's like, when we're having a white wine, I'm like, with dinner, I'm like, go grab the Fiano. It's like one of my favorite new white wines.
Speaker 1 (22:04)
I believe they made significantly less of the white versus the red. if folks are, they try this and they like it, get on the stick because that one's the one that's going to sell out the fastest.
Speaker 2 (22:20)
Yeah, it's great. the artwork on the bottle is great. It makes a great gift. I've given it to a few people, and I've only heard positive things back, both about the wine. And a lot of people are just keeping the bottles and stick some pheasant feathers in the top, make a little feather bouquet.
Speaker 1 (22:37)
Well, yeah, it's a fabulous recipe and it pairs terrifically with a Passalacqua's Fiano. Thanks once again to Passalacqua. It's the first time we've ever had a collaborative wine with our logo on it. And it's just terrific, terrific wine. And it is the season, whether you're gift giving to somebody else or gift giving to yourself, because you got your own holiday traditions, these wines pair terrifically. This one was a pheasant dish and we will be back next week with our second dish, the quail in red wine and mushroom sauce as our second snackable hunter's table podcast. Until then, thank you to Ryan Sparks for putting this recipe together and I'm Bob St. Pierre reminding you to always follow the dog. Something good will rise. Thanks for listening, folks.