"Stubble Duck" for dinner

So, I just finished eating my first pheasant.

When my mom told me she was fixing pheasant for dinner, I was a bit surprised. Isn't pheasant something you get at fancy restaurants where you get 15 forks and everything costs more than what I usually spend on meals for a week? Needless to say, I was excited by this rare treat. Unfortunately after eating it, I am sorry to say that it really wasn't all that special. Sure it was tasty enough, but nowhere near as exotic or decadent as I was expecting.

First of all, pheasants are small. Ours was roughly half the size of an average chicken. When you take into account the amount of bone and tendons present on a typical bird , that translates to even less meat. Now for the taste. While I would say that I think it was a little better than chicken, chicken would probably require about the same amount of preparation work and yield a much larger amount of meat for your trouble. Basically imagine eating slightly dry, but slightly more flavorful chicken and you'll come pretty close to imagining what pheasant tastes like.

Along with the pheasant came the familiar story of my great grandmother and "stubble duck." My mother's side of the family comes mostly from poor peasant stock. As such, they didn't have much to eat around the house. To remedy the situation, my great grandmother would sometimes have to poach pheasants to keep from starving to death out on the prairie. To help keep secret what she was doing, she would refer to pheasant as "stubble duck" to all of her children and grandchildren so that in case they told the wrong person (such as a game warden) what they were having for dinner, they would not arouse suspicion.

Well, all of this worked fine until one of the kids happened to invite the game warden in for stubble duck one evening. Great grandma served it up to him, as she had nothing else to offer. She knew she was caught, but there was nothing she could do now but wait for the inevitable. When the warden finished, he wiped his mouth and stood up. Then, he kind of winked at her in a knowing way and told her that it was certainly the best "stubble duck" he ever had, tipped his hat and went on his way.

It's kind of amazing to think that a dish that is now considered fine cuisine used to be illegally cooked up by my poor great grandmother when there was nothing else available.