Gentle Reader, I don’t know if you are like me at this time of year. Everything I cook or eat is leftovers of one sort or another. Now, I didn’t have a turkey dinner, so I had no leftover turkey. And we managed to eat the entire 1kg of venison loin between the four of us. So none of that either. But I did have left over porchetta, beef and pheasant. I manfully (womanfully?) worked my way through the porchetta and beef with a forestiere sauce made with some game stock, mushrooms and red wine. But, I got a bit fed up with everything looking kind of brown! And I was still finishing off the celeriac and potato mash we had with the venison on Christmas Day.

So, as a joke I tweeted that I was going to make pheasant rissoles. And the lovely Janice from took me seriously. Then, I really wanted rissoles. You know that yearning for something you sometimes get? Mine is usually for chocolate or red wine, but this time I really wanted rissoles. The idea came from James Ramsden’s recipe for Turkey Rissoles on Lovefood. My version is adapted to the ingredients I had to hand and I didn’t add any herbs because the celariac mash had a bit of horseradish and nutmeg mixed in and was quite ‘flavoured’. You might want to add parsley and/or thyme if you are using plain mash…

Ingredients

Equal quantities of mashed potato and pheasant (my mash was a mix of potato and celeriac!)

1 egg

Breadcrumbs (mine were brown bread ones)

Salt and Pepper

Flour

Egg for dipping (I used a leftover egg white)

Groundnut/rapeseed or similar fat for frying

Method

Chop the pheasant meat up

Mix the mash, meat and egg and season well with salt and pepper. Add enough breadcrumbs to make a mixture you can handle easily

Roll into golf ball sized balls

Dip into flour, then egg then breadcrumbs

Chill in the fridge for an hour or so

Heat about 1/4cm oil in a frying pan and fry the rissoles on all sides until they are golden brown and crunchy. If you are using brown bread like me, they will end up looking slightly darker!

Serve with Red Currant jelly or similar and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.