Hato Shiro (Stewed Pigeon)

Ingredients

• 2 pigeons
• 1 cupful syou sauce
• 1/2 cupful mirin sauce or sherry
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 small onion
• 2 tablespoons kudzu starch
• 1/4 pound fat fresh pork
• 1 dozen water chestnuts
• 1/4 pound bamboo shoots
• salt
• pepper

Instructions

1. Select good, plump pigeons; singe and clean them thoroughly, then dry.
2. Rub them well with salt.
3. Take the fat pork and fry out all the fat, and when it is boiling hot put in the pigeons and brown them all over, rolling them on all sides.
4. Have ready the water chestnuts, washed and cut in thin slices, and the bamboo shoots cut in thin strips.
5. Chop up the onion very fine and turn it into the saucepan with the pigeons, adding the syou sauce, pepper, salt, and sugar.
6. Cover very tight and simmer over a slow fire for one hour.
7. Add the mirin sauce, or sherry.
8. Mix two tablespoonfuls of kudzu starch in cold water and stir into the juice until it thickens.
9. Serve with rice.