Quails and Saturday Afternoons.

I love cooking at home on Saturday afternoons. Particularly in summer when the kitchen is sunny and the herbs on my kitchen windowsill are going nuts. It is even a little too hot today and the shutters are closed to stop the basil from keeling over. Walking to the markets in the morning to find something I feel like cooking, then coming home, putting on This American Life, and mucking about with food.

I have been getting pretty excited about quails lately. I was in Australia at the start of the year and staying with the fantastic sommelier Ben Knight — you should visit his website and ask him ridiculous questions about wine. He’ll love it. This recipe was his idea.

1. brush the quails with oil and balsamic
2. put them in a really hot oven (about 210) for 5 minutes then turn it down to about 100 for another 20 (brush them again about halfway through)
3. wait until they have cooled a little then pull the meat off the bones
4. sweat some shallots in butter then add a can of tomatoes and cook it down until they are all pulpy
5. add the meat
6. meanwhile, make a simple jus: put a cup each of chicken stock and red wine in a pan and reduce it really hard until there is about half as much and it is all red and sticky
7. make some fresh pasta
8. mix everything together with a few handfuls of flat leaf parsley and a bit of finely chopped raw garlic
9. eat

The pasta we made here is just cut simply. Ben Knight again suggests rolling out your pasta and then cutting it into irregular shapes. The big flaps of pasta hold lots more quail.

The pasta recipe I use is from Michel Roux. I’ll write about it next time.

~ by bsuryab on July 9, 2009.