If you are middle class enough to live near a Waitrose they have some really good partially boned out oven ready pheasant right now, stuffed with herbs and sausage meat.

So this is a bit of a Nigellla post (minus the crude sexual inuendo and simulated oral sex).

We had the Captain round on Saturday night so I bought two of the wee birds. Pour some vegetable oil in a baking dish and stick it in the oven, then peel, cut into chunks and parboil some spuds so that their outside is a little crumbly, but not too soft. While the spuds are boiling, peel some parsnips and carrots and cut them into fingers. Finely chop a red onion.

Whip the baking dish out of the oven and line the bottom of it with the veg, sprinkling the red onion over the top. give it a good dose of seasoning with some salt, freshly milled black pepper and some mixed dried herbs (fresh rosemary would have been nice too, but I could not get any). Then add a couple of pinches of ground nutmeg and the same of ground cloves. Drizzle some oil over the top and just rest the birds on top of the veg so that the juices will merge with all that veggee goodness. Whack it in the oven and go and listen to a bit of Emmylou Harris for about 50 minutes.

When the Red Dirt Girl has finished whip the birds out of the oven and divide them over three plates, oh yeah don't forget to chuck a couple of Sainsburys ready made Yorkshires back in with the veg while you do that, then after about five minutes plate up the lot.

Serve with some greens and a whacking great big bottle of Soave, and coffee and Irish Whiskey