Roasted Cornish Game Hens

Sometimes, we get a wild hare up our you-know-whats and feel a sudden, inexplicable need to cook an involved dinner. This happened to us Friday on the way home from work, so we called some friends and invited them to dinner Saturday.

The thing that was burning a hole in our ovens was a package of cornish game hens we had bought stupid cheap a few weeks earlier. Interesting thing about cornish game hens: they're not game birds, and they're not necessarily hens, either. It's a breed of chicken, developed in Connecticut in the 1950s, that is ready for processing in 2/3 the time of a normal chicken. It is similar to a poussin, except that it must be from a "cornish chicken or the progeny of a cornish chicken," or at least so says the USDA.

So, in chicken terms, it's a teenager from back east. As good a reason as any to kill it and eat it, I suppose.

Before you begin, a couple of safety tips: First, taking the birds out of the freezer and leaving them on the counter for 9 hours may not be sufficient time for them to thaw. If they're not thawed, run warm water over and through them until the meat is room temperature. Secondly, soup is hot, and I do not recommend coating your hand in it.

Roasted Cornish Game Hens

What You Need

2 birds

2 slices of lemon

1/2 cup of Beaujolais (not the nouveau variety)

1/8 tsp minced rosemary

2 cloves minced garlic

Salt

Pepper

What To Do with It

Preheat your oven to 475 degrees.

Kosher the birds. Well, not a full-on kosher, but rub some kosher salt on the skins and set them aside. This will remove some of the moisture from the skins and help them brown up.

Combine the other ingredients in a roasting pan. You want enough wine to just barely cover the bottom (1/8" or so). Squeeze in the lemon slices. Add a bit of salt and pepper. Taste, and adjust seasoning.

Wipe off the salt from the birds using first a paper towel, and then your hands. This probably goes without saying, but since the object is to dry out the skins, don't use water in this process. Rub each bird with olive oil (about 2 tsp each).

Truss the birds: tie the legs together in the back, and tie a string around the bodies to keep the wings in tight. Place the birds in your roasting pan. I did mine breast side down because I didn't want to baste them to keep the meat moist. Cooking them breast up will give you crispy skin over the breast, but you'll need to baste the birds about every 15 minutes.

Cook at 475 for 15 minutes, then lower temperature to 325 for about 45 minutes. Cook until they're 180 degrees on the inside. If they don't get quite brown enough, you can bump up your temperature at the end for a couple of minutes, and then pass the hens under a broiler for about 2 minutes.

Remove the hens and let them rest for 10 minutes. Empty the remaining liquid into a flat-bottomed pan and reduce to about 1/3 volume for a sauce. Cut each bird in half (just press down with a chef's knife in the middle of the back), plate and serve.

We drank the wine we cooked with, and served with white asparagus with a beurre blanc sauce, wild rice, and a very thick and hot potato leek soup.

Turkey Chilli Rellenos with Tomatillo Salsa

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm glad this year is about over. As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "if it's not one thing, it's another."

To help make it through the season, Jenn and I took off most of Thanksgiving week. Not only did it ease up on the stress of the season, but it gave us a lot more time to play in the kitchen, which has been nice.

Quite frankly, there are few things quite as therapeutic and relaxing has having a bottle of wine and chopping the ever loving %#@! out of some onion.

Couple all that with the fact that, yet again, we have waaaay too much turkey in the refrigerator, and it's time to get those creative juices flowing at maximum (at least for me: Jenn would be content to eat turkey sammiches for the rest of her days).

This little dish, however, may have cured her of that.

Turkey Chilli Rellenos with Tomatillo Salsa

What You Need:

(Chili Relleno)
3 poblano chilis
1/4 lb. chopped turkey (smoked, preferably)
1/8 cup cilantro
1/2 cup black beans
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
2 1/2 ounces of panella fresca, crumbled (or you can use queso fresco, or maybe even goat cheese)
1 cup cornbread dressing
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 tsp salt

(Tomatillo Salsa)
5 roasted tomatillos (destemmed)
1 minced serrano (not seeded)
1/2 avocado
1 large clove garlic, crushed and minced
3/4 tsp cumin
1/2 medium white onion
1/8 cup cilantro
1/4 tsp salt

What To Do with It:

Make the salsa. Just throw the ingredients in a blender and puree for a couple of minutes.

Cut out the tops of the poblanos, and cut out the seeds and membrane. Roast the poblanos in a cast iron skillet over medium-low heat until skin blisters, then peel off skin. (You can blanch them in boiling water, then rinse in cold water, to help the process along).

Mix your other ingredients and stuff into the poblanos. Stick a couple of toothpicks in the top (or along the sides to seal any holes).

Place the chilis in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. Place 1 tablespoon crema mexicana along the length of the poblano, then add a couple tablespoons of salsa.

Serve with mexican rice (start it at the same time you put in your poblanos) and merlot.

What To Do with a Six-Legged Turkey: Smoked Turkey Legs

I'm not a huge football fan, at least not since Jerry Jones became the owner of the Cowboys. Perhaps it's better to say that I'm not a big Cowboys fan, but let's face it, if you're not a Cowboys fan, you can't really enjoy football. Even so, at least once a year I'm able to put aside my disdain for Mr. Jones and enjoy a good football game. That day is Thanksgiving.

Anyone who has watched a T-Day football game knows about the John Madden six (or even sometimes eight) legged turkey. This is all fine and dandy if you do an oven bird (and have a professional cook staff). For the rest of us, the additional-legged variety of turkey poses a problem.

The solution is quite simple, actually: cook the legs separately. With a dry rub. On a grill.

Smoked Turkey Legs

What You Need:

Turkey Legs (skin on). If you live in Dallas, you can get them at Central Market for about $1.50/pound.

Cayenne

Garlic Powder

Onion Powder

Cracked Black Pepper

Cracked Green Pepper

Crushed Dried Rosemary

Dried rubbed Sage

Salt

What To Do With It:

Make your rub. 4:2:2:1:1:1:1 and then salt to taste. You may also want to adjust the herbs. For six legs, you're going to want about 1/2 cup of rub, so use 1/4 cup cayenne, 1/8 cup garlic & onion powder & so on...

Dry the legs, apply the rub, and let sit for a couple of hours, until they're room temperature.

If you're smoking:

You should be going low & slow. Wrap the legs in foil, and place in smoker for two hours, then unwrap, and smoke for an hour on each side.

If you're grilling:

Place the legs on foil, but don't wrap. Cook about an hour per side, then finish for a few minutes without the foil.

Serve with beer. Make lots of cave-man noises while you eat.

Orale! Chipotles in Salsa Adobo!

There's a song that says "God Bless Texas." That is true on soooo many levels, the least of which is that Texas is next to Mexico.

"So what?" you may ask. "So are California and Arizona."

Yes, but have you ever heard of "Cal-Mex," or "Mex-izona"? Didn't think so. But I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that you have heard of Tex-Mex. Because of Tex-Mex, we're introduced to and experience a lot of food that the rest of the country doesn't even know exists. Fajita? Heard it first here (hell, it was invented here). Anything with heat in the spice? Good luck finding that north of the Mason-Dixon.

Which brings us to chipotles. Depending upon which entomologist you believe, "chipotle" is either a Spanish-Aztec word ("chi" for "chili" and "potle," which means "smoke"), or it's derived from an ancient nahuatl word meaning "smoked chili." To me, it just means tasty.

This year, my sister had a bumper crop of jalapenos (along with a lot of other peppers). I, being the loving brother that I am, offered to take a few off her hands. 30 hours, and about five pecan logs later, and I had around 140 smoked jalapenos (also known as chipotles). "Hmmm," I asked myself. "Whatever shall I do with these?" Stick 'em in adobo sauce, of course.

Chipotles in Adobo Sauce

What You Need

About 70-135 chipotles (I used 135, because my peppers started out about 1 1/2 inches long) (Why so many? Because it takes about 30 hours at around 150 degrees to smoke the jalapenos, and you don't want to do that for just 10 peppers. The picture shows them at about 22 hours into the smoking process.)

30 small tomatoes, peeled (you could probably substitute a large can of stewed, whole tomatoes for every 10 tomatoes)

15-oz. can of tomato sauce (to act as a flavor balancer in case your tomatoes lack enough acid)

2 cups cider vinegar

8 cloves garlic, smashed, then minced

4 white onions, chopped

2 tsp ground cumin

3 tsp oregano

Salt (start with about 2 tsp, and then add gradually to taste)

What To Do With It

Sautee onions until translucent.

Mash the garlic with the flat of your knife, mince.

Peel, then puree your tomatoes.

Add tomatoes, vinegar, cumin, oregano salt and 8-15 chipotles to pot (around 6 qt. capacity). Boil, then cover and simmer 1.5 hours.

At this point, puree in batches.

Return puree to pot, add remaining chipotles, and simmer another 1.5 hours. Salt along the way to taste.

If necessary, reduce until the sauce clings to a metal spoon.

When you're done, you're going to have around 3 quarts of chipotles and salsa adobo. You may want to have a few 1/2 pint jars around and then can your chipotles and salsa. I filled just over 12, with each having 10 peppers (which filled 1/2 a jar).