Read Around My French Table Online
Authors: Dorie Greenspan
T
HIS IS ONE OF THE EASIEST WAYS
I know to make a really good dinner really fast. Cornish hens are quick-cookers in general, but prepared as they are here, split in half and flattened, their time in the oven is even shorter. The French call this preparation
en crapaudine,
which translates roughly to "like a toad," which is what the flattened hens, with their legs splayed and their wings sticking out, resemble. It's not the most appetizing description for a dish, I know (the British word for the technique,
spatchcocked,
doesn't sound any more appealing), but cutting the hens like this halves their cooking time and gives you crisp skin all around.
For this version of
poussin en crapaudine,
I work some tapenade under the hens' skin and give them an olive oil massage, a squirt of lemon juice, and just 30 minutes in the oven.
Depending on what else you've got on the menu, 1 hen will serve 1 or 2 people. To serve 4 people, just cut the roasted hens in half. You can also double the recipe.
| 2 | Cornish hens, preferably organic, at room temperature |
| About 2 teaspoons tapenade, black (my first choice) or green, homemade ( [>] ) or store-bought | |
| Olive oil | |
| Fresh lemon juice | |
| Salt and freshly ground pepper | |
| Lemon wedges, for serving |
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Oil a shallow roasting pan or your broiler pan. (For easier cleanup, line the pan with nonstick aluminum foil and oil that.)
Working with 1 hen at a time, using kitchen shears or a chef's knife, cut down along both sides of the backbone to remove it. Discard the bone (or put it into your scraps-for-stock pile) and turn the bird breast side up on the cutting board. Now, putting your weight into it, press the heel of your hand against the middle of the hen's breastbone, crack the bone, and flatten the bird. With that bit of rough work done, gently loosen the skin from the flesh, separating it just enough to get to the breast meat and the chubby part of the thighs. Using your fingers, work half of the tapenade under the skin—you don't need much of the tapenade in any one place; a little, when heated, goes a long way.
Transfer the hens to the roasting pan, skin side up, and give the skin a rubdown with some olive oil. Sprinkle over some lemon juice, season with salt and pepper, and slide the pan into the oven.
Roast the hens undisturbed for 25 to 30 minutes, until the skin is deeply golden and crisp and the juices run clear when you prick the thighs.
If you're serving 4, cut the birds in half by slicing them along the breastbone. Serve with lemon wedges and, if you'd like, a drizzle of olive oil.
MAKES 2 TO 4 SERVINGS
SERVING
I like to serve the birds almost au naturel: If the pan juices aren't burned, I may spoon a little of them over the hens, but usually I just moisten the hens with a few drops of olive oil and surround them with lemon wedges. A squeeze of lemon is really all the dressing these birds need.
STORING
Any leftovers make good snacking the next day.
O
UR READILY AVAILABLE CORNISH HENS ARE
perfect stand-ins for the slightly smaller French
poussins,
or baby chickens. They're good little birds to cook on busy weeknights, since they're tasty, versatile, and in and out of the oven in about 40 minutes—and that's with stuffing (here a simple mix of bread and sausage). While a French cook might make even quicker work of this dish, because she can pick up her ready-made sausage stuffing from the butcher, this stuffing can still be put together in a flash, adding only a few extra minutes to your American kitchen time.
A word on serving size: Depending on what else you've got on the menu, 1 hen will serve either 1 or 2 people. If you decide to make 2 hens for 4, roast the hens, then cut them in half along the breast and backbones. Of course, you can also double the recipe; in that case, use two skillets or a larger roaster.
| 2 | Cornish hens, preferably organic (livers reserved if included), at room temperature |
| About 2 tablespoons olive oil | |
| About 1½ tablespoons unsalted butter, plus (optional) 1 tablespoon cold butter if making the sauce | |
| 1 | garlic clove, split, germ removed, and finely chopped |
| 1 | shallot or ½ small onion, finely chopped, rinsed, and dried |
| ¼ | pound sausage, casings removed if necessary (you can use sweet or hot sausage or a mixture) |
| ½ | slice stale bread, crust removed, cut into small cubes |
| 1 | large egg, lightly beaten |
| 2 | tablespoons minced fresh parsley |
| Salt and freshly ground pepper | |
| ½ | cup dry white wine (optional) |
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly butter or oil an oven-going skillet (I use my old cast-iron skillet) or a small roaster.
If you were lucky enough to get hens with livers, rinse and dry the livers, cut away any veins and green spots, and coarsely chop them.
Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil and ½ tablespoon of the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Toss in the garlic and shallot or onion and stir everything around for a minute or so. Add the livers, if you've got them, and stir for another minute. Toss in the sausage and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, breaking up any lumps. Remove from the heat and let cool for a couple of minutes, then stir in the bread, beaten egg, and parsley; season with salt and pepper.
Salt and pepper the insides of the hens and spoon in the stuffing, taking care not to pack it in too tightly or too fully. Rub the hens with a couple teaspoons of olive oil and a tablespoon or so of butter, then season them generously with salt and pepper.
Put them in the skillet and slide the pan into the oven—if you'd like, you can roast the hens using the side-side-back method: lay them on their sides in the skillet and give them 15 minutes of roasting time, turn them over onto their other sides and give them another 15 minutes, and then finish by roasting them for 10 minutes on their backs. However you roast them, cook for 40 minutes, or until the juices run clear when you prick their thighs at the thickest part.
When the hens are ready, give them a little feet-in-the-air rest: transfer them to a platter, put a bowl at one end of the platter, turn the birds over, breast side down, and rest their legs on the bowl. Cover them lightly with a foil tent and leave them like this for about 5 minutes, or while you make the sauce, if you'd like.
To make a pan
jus,
cut the tablespoon of cold butter into quarters. Pour off the fat in the skillet (or roaster) and put the pan over medium-high heat. When it's hot, pour in the wine and let it bubble away until it's reduced by about half. Pull the pan from the heat and swirl in the pieces of cold butter. Check for salt and pepper.
Serve the hens with the sauce, if you made it.
MAKES 2 TO 4 SERVINGS
SERVING
If you're going to split the hens, cut them in half along the breast and backbone with kitchen shears or a good strong knife, then tuck half the stuffing under each half. If you've made a pan sauce, just pour a little of it over each serving.
STORING
If you've got leftovers, remove the stuffing from the hens and keep it and the bird(s) covered in the fridge—it makes for great next-day snacking.
If you're like me, seared duck breast isn't the first thing that jumps to mind when you think of fast food. Consider it another culinary tic that proves we're not French.
For us, duck is often thought of as a fancy restaurant dish; for the French, it's something that can be seared, sauced, and served in under 30 minutes on a weeknight, which explains why there are so many simple duck dishes in every home cook's recipe box.
In France, you'd buy a
magret de canard,
and it would come from a Moulard, a duck that's a cross between a Muscovy and a Pekin (Long Island) duck. The entire Moulard is used: The legs make duck confit (a dish in which the legs are cooked in their own fat and then preserved in that fat). The breast, which is often aged for a few days, is prized for its dark, flavorful meat, sometimes likened to that of a tender steak, as well as for its thick layer of fat, which is rendered in cooking (the cooked breast is actually quite low in calories) and saved because it's so good for frying potatoes.
You can find Moulard breasts here (see Sources
[>]
), but most of our markets offer Muscovy ducks, a very lean breed, or Pekins, another lean breed. Neither is as succulent as the Moulard, but either will make a terrific dinner. And any of the breasts, once seared (see
[>]
for the easy technique) and rested (an important part of cooking duck breasts), will take to a sweet-sour finish. Almost without fail, recipes for
magret de canard
include something acidic, usually vinegar, and something sweet, often honey and just as often fruit, or both honey and fruit. The combinations are classic for good reason—they play perfect point-counterpoint with the duck's rich meatiness.
When you get duck breasts in a restaurant, they're always served sliced—the breasts are cut on the diagonal into slices about ½ inch thick—with the slices overlapping each other just a bit. At home, you might not want to arrange it that way on individual plates, but it's good to slice the duck anyway, since slicing on the diagonal makes it more tender.
A note on size: American duck breasts can weigh from about 5 ounces to almost 1 pound. The smaller breasts are single-serves, while the large ones are generous but right for 2 people. Sometimes I cook an extra breast so I'll have leftovers, and, of course, if there are any leftover slices, I keep them. The meat can be diced and added to lentils, white beans, or potatoes, the way you'd add bacon; incorporated into a salad; or used to make a great sandwich.
H
ERE'S WHEN I HAD MY
duck-as-an-everyday-food epiphany: hurrying through the rue des Carmes market one Saturday, I grabbed a couple of duck breasts and then cooked them in under 20 minutes, and I thought, "I may never resort to pasta and cheese again."
In this dish, the breasts are seared in a casserole, wrapped in foil for a short rest, and reheated for a minute in a mix of honey, balsamic vinegar, lime juice, and a bit of the duck fat. Served with country bread and a salad, which you can put together while the ducks are resting (and which you can toss with a little of the fat, if you'd like), you've got the kind of meal that would make you happy were it served to you at your favorite bistro. But unless that bistro is next door, it would take you longer to get there than to make this satisfying meal.
| 2 | large duck breasts, preferably from a Moulard, or 4 small duck breasts (about 2 pounds total), at room temperature |
| Salt and freshly ground pepper | |
| 2 | tablespoons balsamic vinegar |
| 1 | tablespoon honey |
| Juice of 1 lime |
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
Using the point of a sharp knife, score the duck skin in a crosshatch pattern, cutting deeply into the layer of fat but taking care not to nick the meat. Season both sides of the breasts with salt and pepper.
Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. (You can cook the breasts in a skillet, but a casserole does a better job of containing the fat spatters. A cast-iron casserole is perfect.) When a few drops of water sprinkled into the pot dance and evaporate quickly, put the breasts in the casserole skin side down—stand away, because the fat will spatter. Cook for 8 minutes, or until the skin is brown and crisp. Turn the pieces over and cook for 3 minutes more for very rare breasts, which will cook a tad more during their rest in the oven. If you'd like the meat slightly more cooked, keep the breasts in the pot for up to 2 minutes longer. (Cook any longer, and they will really be well-done, which is not what's best for a duck breast.)
Lift the breasts out of the pot and onto a sheet of aluminum foil. Seal the breasts loosely in the foil and put them on a baking sheet in the oven for 5 minutes to rest and finish cooking. (Now's a good time to make a salad.)
Pour off almost all the fat from the pot (you should have just a teaspoon or two left in the pot), and put the pot over medium heat. When the fat is warm, stir in the balsamic, honey, and lime juice, as well as the duck juices that have accumulated in the foil packet, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Return the breasts to the pot and reheat them, about 30 seconds on each side.
Slice the duck and serve drizzled with the sauce.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
SERVING
Transfer the breasts to a cutting board and, working on the diagonal, cut each breast into ½-inch-thick slices. Drizzle with the sauce and serve immediately. I usually serve the duck with nothing more than a salad—frisée or arugula—but if you're not on a 20-minute timetable, it would be great to add either some Broth-Braised Potatoes (
[>]
) or a half-portion of Endives, Apples, and Grapes (
[>]
) to each plate.
STORING
If you have leftover duck, it can be refrigerated for up to 2 days, wrapped well; use it in salads or sandwiches. Sliced into thin strips, it adds flavor, texture, and a touch of heartiness to soups.