Text 15246, 191 rader
Skriven 2014-07-28 19:57:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE DRUM
Ärende: Wild 714
================
 DD> I know about using kudzu for salads. As to the pigeon and squirrel

Kudzu root is a Japanese staple. Why it shouldn't be one of
ours?

 DD> deal - you pre-suppose that their tastiness would arouse the "mighty
 DD> hunter" aspect of our macho side(s). But, that would be subsumed by the
 DD> ease of buying a piece of beef down the super - or a burger and fries
 DD> down the Mickey D's. 

With the price of beef doing what it's doing, maybe the
time has come.

 DD> OTOH, there is a campaign afoot to promote Asian Carp (a highly
 DD> invasive and voracious species that can survive and thrive in both salt
 DD> and fresh water) as a tasty food and as a decent fertiliser.

It is a tasty food, if you like mud, and I'm sure you can
use it as a fertilizer.

 DD> The other tip-off to their being faux strawberries is that the flowers
 DD> are yellow.
 
Lilli at this moment wrestling with a mustard packet, and I'm
laughing - one of my only recent attacks of Schadenfreude.
She got a third of a pound of Black Forest ham and a couple
Kaiser rolls, so the deli person gave her the Gordian mustard.
The packet just gave way, and contrary to my expectation
malodorous goo did not spurt all over the table. The way you can
tell that this stuff is faux mustard is that it's bright yellow.

Pasticcio di piccioni - Macaroni Pigeon Pie
cat: Swiss, Italian, game, main, starter, Bolognese
Servings: 4 or 8

3 pigeons
100 g bacon
2 lg carrots
1 celery stalk
1 lg onion
150 mL Marsala or Port or sweet red wine
500 g maccheroni (short tubular pasta, not the little horns)
h - Bechamel sauce
1 Tb butter
2 Tb flour
2 c milk
h - Short dough (for 300 g Puff Pastry)
200 g butter
200 g flour
2 eggs
1 pn sugar
Salt and pepper

Extraordinary 19th century Italian pie filled with
maccheroni in a pigeon sauce. The height of Italian haute
cuisine a century ago.

The climax of 19th century Italian haute cuisine dinner was
often a pie filled with macaroni in the most extraordinary
sauce. In Visconti's movie Il Gattopardo, the arrival of the
pie is the height of the dinner scene. And yet, for all its
past glamour, this is a dish nobody makes anymore. I used a
traditional Bologna recipe for this pigeon/squab macaroni pie.

This way of preparing fowl is called salmis [salmee] by the
French and was very much in favor in 19th century Paris.
Antonin Carême, the king of French chefs, uses it in about
every other dish. First we finely chop carrots, celery,
onions and bacon. Mirepoix, used real pot as a pan,
traditional salmis roasted then carcass is pounded and
boiled for an hour with the rest.

This mixture of finely chopped vegetables and bacon is
called mirepoix [meeruhpoy] by the French and it is a
fundamental ingredient in building up the flavor in many
traditional sauces - read on to see how.

Fowl's giblets - heart, liver and gizzards - are a wonderful
and tradition-sanctioned way of enhancing the flavor of any
meat sauce. Meat-eating European gourmet consider it
sacrilege to throw them away. I don't eat liver, heart nor
haggis, but in a sauce these parts have their rightful
place. Please do try it at least one, even with a little
piece. The giblets' flavor will dissolve into the sauce and
you won't be able to tell it apart from the rest apart from
that haunting hit-me-back taste.

Wash the organs carefully and make sure to remove any of the
bitter green matter from the livers (the ones that are liver
shaped are the livers). Not for the faint-hearted. I can't
say that I like this part but you have to admit the colors
are pretty spectacular. Gives a whole new meaning to the
color painters call pigeon blood!

Finely chop the gizzards and crush the livers under the
blade of a large kitchen knife.

We now brown the mirepoix and the gibblets in a large pot
with a little oil to enhance their flavor using the
Maillard's reactions.

Once the mirepoix is nicely browned, add the pigeons/squabs
and turn frequently until browned on all sides. The same
chemical process is at work here to enhance the flavor of
the meat. In Scotland they would be boiled, but the French
know better and the Italians just copied this.

Add a glass of Marsala or Port or Wine. This will dissolve
the browned food that may have stuck to the bottom of the
pot and add a touch of tartness to the sauce. Bring to a
boil.

Meanwhile, finely chop 2 slices of ham.

Add a glass of warm stock or water, the chopped ham and a
pinch of salt to the pigeon pot and reduce heat to low. Let
it cook covered until pigeon is cooked - about 15 minutes.

Fish the pigeons out of the pot and lay them on a cutting
board.

Using a sharp knife, remove both breasts and slice them
crosswise.

Now it's our turn to call the French barbarians. To obtain
a smooth and homogenous sauce nobody will guess the
composition of, we strain the sauce using a conical sieve
called chinois [sheenoah], from the shape of traditional
Chinese hats. The cook can't help thinking it is a pity to
through out vegetables, bacon and gizzards, but French
culinary tradition reasons that most of the flavor has
passed to the sauce by now. I suppose in the 19th century
there would be no lack of interest for this by-products - by
servants or pets.

Traditional French salmis is done slightly differently. The
fowl is roasted in an oven, then the breasts are removed and
slices. The carcasses are pounded and added back to the pot
to cook for a good hour, then the whole thing is strained.
This process makes good use of the carcasses which are lost
in our Italian recipe explained above.

Now we reach the stage where the real reason why these
macaroni pies are not made anymore. The whole thing is baked
inside a short dough, that horrible, tasteless culinary
horror of medieval descent. Sweet short dough may be all
right in a custard-filled pie, but present-day diners
outside the British Isles just can't bring themselves to eat
these huge yellowish shells. I am quite sure that using a
puff pastry would lead to more enticing results. Still, I
made my pie like the Italians did 150 years ago and
carefully mixed butter, flour, eggs, salt and sugar. That's
right, sugar. Most traditional Italian pasta pies use a
sweet short dough outer shell.

While we are at the confessional, I admit not having
prepared the bechamel sauce (besciamella in Italian), which
ought to be mixed with the macaronis to make the pie more
juicy. If you wish to do it, just fry a 2 tsbp flour in 1
tsbp butter until butter is fully melted and intimate with
the flour, then add 2 cups milk and mix until it thickens.

Undercook your macaroni by 1 minute. I make my own from
semolina flour and freerange eggs, but feel free to use
bought macaroni. Just don't tell anyone!

Spread the dough and use it to cover the inside of a tall
cake pan or non-stick saucepan. I used a non-stick Dutch
oven with good results since all my cake pans were too flat.

Mix pasta and sauce, add the grated cheese and béchamel
sauce if using. Cover with remaining dough, make a
finger-sized hole or chimney on top for the steam to escape.
I think the egg wash on top is superfluous as this side will
be down anyway.

Bake in a medium hot oven for 1 hour. Let the pie rest
outside for at least 10 minutes before carefully inverting
it on a cutting board and unmold.

Despite my reservations about the short dough, I reckon this
is an extraordinary dish and very tasty. Definitely
something your guests will enjoy and remember for many
years. And you are travelling 150 years back to the time of
Antonin Careme and Rossini.

fxcuisine.com

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