Today we were lucky at the butcher's and walked away with four fresh quail. It's game season again... hooray! After the initial flush had passed, I began to worry about what I was going to do with said quail. Predictably, I turned to Google and tapped in the appropriate key words. I found several kind of boring recipes, several very complicated-sounding ones and one that seemed just right. Interestingly, the recipe was on someone's Flickr page - he'd cleverly made a set of the photographs that went with the recipe and used the set description area to write out the recipe. Clever! I'll fill in the name of this wonderful person when I find it again!
That said, it was a very simple recipe - stuff the quail with pancetta (in my case, speck, a smoky, air-cured ham similar to Parma) and sage (growing wild in my garden), season and pan fry until brown, add 1/2 glass of white wine and cook an additional 20 minutes partially covered and keeping an eye on the liquid in the pan. While this was going on, my husband Steve prepared some of the most fluffy mashed potatoes imaginable and I prepared some quickly sauteéd spinach* with garlic which I dressed with olive oil and a very nice balsamic vinegar. The spinach and potatoes were from our organic box and tasted fantastic. The spinach was a variety I'd never seen before with both yellow and bright red stalks that were crunchy and sweet to eat. Awesome! (Well, um, that's because the "spinach" was chard, actually - thanks Anja...)
Happy eating! xx
3 comments:
Um, Lisa? That "spinach" is most likely chard, specifically the "bright lights" variety.
It really is very pretty, isn't it? I grew up eating chard, but ours only had dark red stems. I preferred eating it raw to my mom's pressure-cooking treatment.
:-)
Hahahaha! Thanks, Anja! I didn't believe it was spinach but I've only knowingly had chard once before - it didn't taste *that* good and it certainly didn't have bright yellow and red stalks! Besides, I was misled by by organic box insisting that it was 'spinach' (and I was grateful to have it because it turned out to be a delicious substitute for beetroot - which I put on my 'I don't like' list after getting it 3 or 4 weeks in a row!) 'Bright Lights Chard'- I definitely like it! :)
You do realize that chard is a good substitute for beetroot because it is basically a type of BEET GREENS, right? :-)
Beta vulgaris var. cicla
By the way, beetroots are lovely if baked.
See this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/72861
Follow exactly. DO NOT WASH THEM.
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