Roasted Quail with Grapes and Chestnuts
Looks like there may be quite a White Christmas in Boston this year! I have seen snowflakes in the forecast for over a week now, but as the days passed, the real snowflakes never really manifested (minus the few that fluttered about on my birthday).
Inbound, Red Line, Longfellow Bridge.
Charles River. freezing.
ummm… SNOW!!!!
Until today. The snow has been lightly, but steadily falling since late this morning, and there was already an inch or so accumulated by the time I slip-and-slided walked home! It’s kind of exciting- the first snow of the winter- I almost can’t wait to see what kind of white wonderland we will wake up to tomorrow!
Speaking of Christmas, this will be the first year (out of 29!!) where I will not be home with my parents for Christmas. There was that one year, when I was visiting with my uber-adventurous cousin Emily in Peru, but I still flew back on Christmas Day, just in time to be picked up from the airport on the way to annual Christmas Lunch with Emily’s family and friends (minus Emily, as she was still traipsing around the islands of Lake Titicaca- and no, I’m totally not making that name up, even I am not THAT good). It’s a strange feeling… and though I was just home less than a month ago, it feels… just weird.. to not be preparing to see family and friends and having to send cards and presents via the good old-fashioned way instead of just packing them in my luggage.
*p.s. To those dear friends and family members… the gifts will be late, as I have never had to send them before, I procrastinated as usual and still don’t have all my Xmas shopping done totally did not factor in the time it would take for the post office to get things from this side of the country to that side.
Instead of Christmas in California, it will be my first Christmas in Virginia (which has ALREADY experienced snow last week!) with Andreas and his family. I am looking forward to being around a close-knit family for Christmas and experiencing their Christmas traditions-especially for the tradition started last year, where Andreas, his brother, and his father (and some extremely helpful hunting dogs) hunt game birds. Andreas assured me that with his expert marksmanship, we could expect an impressive bounty this year to prepare for dinner.. so of course, we test-drove a new recipe to find a suitably Christmas-worthy (read: TASTY) preparation for quail.
Last year for Thanksgiving we fried quails to crispy perfection. This year I found this recipe, which includes a cognac-based sauce that is very similar (almost identical) to the one we frequently make to glamorize our steaks (and believe me, it DOES). But it also interestingly included green grapes and roasted chestnuts, and since this IS the “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” time of the year, it seemed quite serendipitous.
The little birds are pan-roasted and then finished in the oven, though we found that if the birds are small (and de-boned), they could probably be cooked entirely in the pan and this would also increase the crispyness of the final product. And we all know crispy skin = good to eat. The sauce is flavored with thyme and cognac, made smooth and lustrous with cream, and reduced until it is rich and syrupy. Roasted chestnuts and sweet green grapes are cooked briefly with the sauce and though their flavors don’t seem to infuse the sauce too much, the grapes are sweet and provide interesting contrast with the very savory sauce and bird. Looking forward to Christmas (and quails!) in Virginia!
