The recipe prepared for this week's Whisk Wednesdays' assignment is from Class 22, Part 3: Cailles à la Normande (Quail with Cream and Apples). It can be found in the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu at Home on pages 212-213.
Quail, okay...not something you can find easily in Indiana, but I did manage to come up with four little (and I mean little) quail courtesy of a quail farm in Georgia, frozen. When I unwrapped them, my first thought was, "Ohhhh...they are so little...like babies..." and I wasn't sure I could actually go through with it.
Despite the hesitation, I seasoned the little birdies, trussed them up a bit to tie their little legs together as they looked a little indecent without the trussing, wrapped their breasts in the bacon like a little shawl (no fatback could be located this week), to keep them moist while cooking, browned them in the pan, and baked them in the oven for 20 minutes at 400. It smelled really good in the kitchen...poultry and bacon has a way of enticing one to the table! Mark and Matt also enjoyed eating the bacon with this...in the recipe it said to discard the fatback, but when I went to discard the bacon, there were many cries of "No, don't get rid of the bacon, we want to eat that!" And so they did, commenting on how good it was with the sauce on it.
I made three inch croutons as a little bed for the quail, as instructed (well, it said four inch croutons, but my loaf of bread would not do a four inch cut, so I went with three inch ones. Note: the four inch would be better as the little quail would rest completely on that size, so next time I will have larger/taller bread on hand). This worked nicely for elevating the quail and soaking up a little of the meat juices and the apple/brandy/cream sauce.
Oh, was that sauce so good...plus it had the added attraction for me of getting to set things aflame in the kitchen, on purpose, which is always fun!
I could not find little golden delicious apples, the only ones available were HUGE, probably twice the size of the little bitty quail, so I did not broil and caramelize them the way they described in the book as they would have been way too large in proportion. Instead, I just diced the apples and did it that way (easier to eat at the table this way, too).
I figured the guys would like the quail, but there wasn't a whole lot of it, so I made some little lemon scallion brown rice tartlets and snuggled the caramelized apples in those, along with some steamed carrots on the side, and a mixed baby greens salad. There were comments made, as guys like to do, of course, about this little bitty bird being an "appetizer."
As a meal for men and growing boys: Quail would NOT be it. Unless you owned a flock of quail and could readily make several dozen per meal...at $5.00 a quail, however, it's not happening here anytime soon.
The quail was tasty and delicious, I had never had quail before, so it was fun to try something new, and I would like to order it at a French restaurant sometime to see what the chef does with it. Unlike the guys, I thought the portion size was just fine. I would make this again as Mark particularly enjoyed it very much and indicated that he would like to have it again. It was that good.
And, I have a whole bottle of Calvados to figure out what to do with if I don't...maybe Dorie has something coming up that requires Calvados. Oh, I am having the greatest time learning new cooking techniques and recipes!
This one was so delicious and definitely will have a return visit occasionally here.
If you would like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in this class, click here, and then on the Whisk Wednesdays connect to individual bloggers, or better yet, come and join us! Shari has the ingredients posted on her site at the click, so while we can't post the recipe instructions, you can at least look at the ingredients, and I bet you can figure out a lot of it from there.
The Next Assignment
• Class 22, Part 4:
Pintade à la Cévenole (Guinea Hen with Mushrooms and Chestnuts) pages 187-188 {You can substitute Duck breast if you like.}