Dinner Diary - Partridges Roasted on Horse Mushrooms

We picked up a whole lot of partridges in Ely Market yesterday. They're often cheap if you find them at a farmers market at this time of year, and they're absolutely delicious. And on the way home we came across a whole lot of horse mushrooms - nice, big, fat ones too. And that rather dictated what we had to have for dinner.

Simple stuff really - I put some stock veg (leafy celery, quartered onion and carrots) in a skillet with two big mushrooms, and then rubbed butter and seasoning over the birds (with another bit of butter inside), then drizzled just a little oil, salt and pepper on the mushrooms and put them in the pan with the birds on top.

 You need big mushrooms for this of course, but if you can get them I do urge you to try partridge this way - the juices flow through the mushrooms and help for a rich gravy, while themselves picking up a flavour thats a superb accompaniment for the partridge. 

I poured about half a glass of blackberry wine in the pan, alongside a glass of water. This went into a hot oven (200C in my fan-assist, you'd want 210C or 220C without a fan) for half an hour. Thats long enough to cook the partridges (which were put aside to rest) and to get some flavour out of the vegetables for the gravy.

Speaking of which, the gravy! Thats about the most important component of any roasted dish, right? So after while resting the partridges (and microwaving some spuds for mash) I poured the juice out of the skillet and stirred some flour in around the stock veg, before slowly adding the juice back in over a low heat. Basically to cook more flavour out of the stock veg while thickening the sauce. And again, this is simple stuff but its worth spending a few minutes getting this right. I added just the tiniest dash of soy sauce too - there was enough flavour in the gravy but a tiny bit more umame sometimes doesn't hurt.

The whole thing was served up, with the partridges still resting on the mushrooms, with mashed spuds and steamed cabbage - a really old fashioned, simple way of serving up a roast. 

Trying to work out what this cost is, as ever when you're pricing up simple food, surprising - the partridges clock in at £1.67 each, a sack of spuds is so cheap that each serving is a few pennies, and if you're buying cabbage its probably the cheapest and tastiest green vegetable at the greengrocers. So the whole thing clocks up at under £2 per serving. And trust me, this is a dish fit for royalty.