Simple Pheasant Breasts and Ginger Ice Cream Floats

I know I'm a bit eccentric in the kitchen, and quite often use more than necessary ingredients, so sometimes it is difficult to hold back and keep a recipe to its basics. This comes into its own most with good-quality game meats; take duck for example, all you need is a little orange and a good salad and the taste of the meat carries the meal the rest of the way. Here, it's pheasant breasts which I buy in vacuum packs from good butchers in fairly high quantity, freeze some and cook the rest there and then. All I need is a salad with a good, golden, gutsy dressing, creamy polenta, some crispy bacon and a red vermouth sauce. You needn't even dig out a chopping board.
I don't believe that dessert should be served just on special days; I don't mean you should prepare a massive pavlova day-to-day (although don't get me wrong I would if I could), but just some fresh fruit and chocolate or you can spruce up bought vanilla ice cream with chocolate peanut butter sauce, toasted hazelnuts and maple syrup, raisins or sultanas soaked in dark rum- the list is endless. One of my favourites is an ice cream float, an American invention that consists purely of a scoop of ice cream and whatever fizzy drink you like, the carbonation creating a thick layer of creamy foam (that foam can be punctuated with a little prickle of bourbon or vodka if you're that way inclined). I drink a lot of ginger beer because I love a good Shirley Temple sharpened with some lime or lemon, and it gives a delicious bit of bite to the pudding.
1)In a drizzle of oil, cook 4 pheasant breasts over high heat until the meat is seared, with the tiniest hint of rarity within. In the same pan, cook 4 rashers of smoked bacon until very crisp. Keep the pheasant warm in some foil meanwhile.
2)Mix up (roughly as this is to taste) 2:1 rapeseed oil and white wine vinegar with a good dash of dijon or English mustard and 1/2 tsp or so of sea salt. Add a little water until it's the right consistency. Use it to dress the salad at the last minute.
3)To serve 4, sprinkle 200g polenta over 800ml boiling salted water and stir immediately until slightly less thick than mashed potato (it will continue to thicken as it cools). From here on in it's exactly the same as mashed potato so add as much milk, butter and salt and pepper as you wish.
4)In the hot pan that the bacon was cooked in, bubble away 200ml red vermouth with pepper and a small handful of fresh sage, snipped in with kitchen scissors. That's everything for the main done!
5)Do the ice cream floats at the table for a bit of fun (I know, life of the party, right?), simply scoop a dollop of soft vanilla ice cream in the bottom of a tall glass and top with as much ginger beer as it can take before spilling, although when it does spill it's somehow wonderful.