My Dad went Dove hunting over the weekend and brought me home a bag of fresh Dove breasts. After a quick search through my cookbooks and good 'ole Google, I discovered that there's more information out there about Dove Chocolates than there is about cooking Dove breasts! I figured you can't go wrong with a stew, so I just started making things up.
One forum told me that Dove meat was very rich and flavorful, so I figured I needed something to balance that out. I chose sweet potatoes, thinking the sweetness would offset the dark meat. Turns out, the sweetness simply overpowered the stew.
I started out by pressure cooking the breasts to soften the meat and loosen it from the tiny bones. The broth was oily and yellow, not at all what I expected, so I opted to discard that and use chicken stock to create the stew. The freshly cooked meat was tender and moist, with a flavor stronger than dark meat chicken, but not quite gamey.
All in all, the Dove breasts would do better in a soup/stew more closely related to a Chicken Pot Pie Soup.
Dove Stew
10 Dove breasts, cleaned
1 cup red wine
4 cups chicken stock
3 sweet potatoes, chopped into bite sized pieces
lots of fresh herbs, minced (I used rosemary, sage, thyme and 5 bay leaves)
1 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper
2 cups green peas
Place breasts in pressure cooker and cover with water. Cook on high for 15 minutes. Let pressure release naturally. Drain breasts and remove meat from bones, shredding as you go.
Combine remaining ingredients except peas in pressure cooker and cook on high for 15 minutes. Release pressure slowly. Add peas and let stand 5 minutes before serving.