Iron Skillet Quail (with a few sides)

Even The Babe had a slump now and then.  I'm not comparing myself to him, of course...I'm not from the Bronx, nor do I play baseball. And I'm certainly not fat.

I'm just saying, it's been a while since I cooked anything worth sharing.  That, and my analogies stink.

That all changed Monday.  Jenn and I were doing some shopping at Central Market, and had already picked up some fiddle heads, when Jenn spied quail at the meat counter."I want that," she said. 

One thing I am is well-trained. So quail for dinner it was.

Iron Skillet Quail (with a few sides)

What You Need

For the quail

2 quail, deboned except for legs & wings
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground fennel seed
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp olive oil
juice of 1/2 lime

For the sides

1/2 cup fiddle heads
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp butter
1 basil leaf, chiffonaded

3 crimini mushrooms, quartered
1 shallot, finely diced
1 yellow squash, sliced
4 leaves of tarragon, minced

1/4 cup black quinoa

What To Do With It

Tie together the legs of the quail at the bottom (just to make them behave a little better when you're cooking them).

Mix together the rest of your ingredients into a paste and spread on the quail on both sides. Let sit at room temperature for 1.5-2 hours.

20 minutes before you want to eat, turn an oven to 400, heat a small skillet over low heat (and put in the butter, basil & garlic to awaken it) and put about 2 cups of water on to boil.  Rinse your quinoa until the water is no longer cloudy. Drizzle the mushrooms, squash and shallots with olive oil, add a couple pinches of salt and the tarragon, and transfer to an oven-safe dish.

At the 15-minute mark (or once your oven is preheated and your water boiling), put the mushrooms in the oven and the quinoa in the water (once that starts to boil again, turn it down to a simmer).  Turn your small skillet up to medium-low and add the fiddle heads with a pinch of salt. 

Continue to stir the quinoa and keep an eye on the fiddle heads (when they turn a bright green, let them cook another two minutes and they're done: turn off the heat, but leave them in the pan). At about the 6-minute mark, turn the heat under a cast iron skillet to medium high.

With 4 1/2 minutes to go, drizzle some olive oil in your cast iron skillet, get it coated, and put in the quail for just over 2 minutes a side.

Plate it all up and enjoy (any time other than a couple weeks in spring, you won't be able to have the fiddle heads).   We served this with a Dis-Tinto wine (50/50 syrah/tempranillo), which didn't go too badly, but fought with the fiddle heads a bit.

Drunken Mango

I like rum. And by "like" I mean it should be one of the food groups.

Unfortunately, I've yet to find a nutritionist that will back me up on this.  What's worse, they all seem to go the exact opposite direction and tell me that perhaps I should cut some out of my diet, and cite various studies linking rum with all sorts of bad things.

It just goes to show you, some people will believe anything they read.

Nonetheless, I think I've found the perfect way to mollify such people: include what they would consider a healthy fruith with my rum.

Genius, I tell you. Pure genius.

Drunken Mango

What You Need

Some sort of fancy container that will seal.
Enough ripe mango to fill said container.
Good rum (for this I used Pyrate XO, which is from Antigua, though just about any good sipping rum from the Windward or Leeward Isles would do)
Vanilla bean.

What To Do With It

After cutting the side off your mango, peel it then slice it lengthwise.  Turn your container on its side and lay the mango in (you're going to stack it like logs so that all the slices are standing upright). 

Once you've gotten your vessel sufficiently packed, add about 1/10 of a vanilla bean and fill to the top with rum.  Let that sit for a week or so.

Eat the mango. Drink the rum.

All My Drinking Friends Have a Sailing Problem, Part Deux: Green Flash

Another year, another LakeFest. This year, I was tasked with coming up with a drink that would not be co-opted by anybody (last year's blue water margaritas got a different moniker when the crew of Blue Flash showed up).

After about an hour of careful research, we came up with what we initially called a "Shooting Star." After a happy accident, however, we settled on calling it a "Green Flash" (which, incidentally, is an atmospheric phenomenon, and should not be confused with that pesky blue flash that occurs in critical nuclear accidents).

Given the inherent ... uncertainty ... that can go along with this type of experimentation, and being the quasi-professional drunkard that I am, I diligently subjected both myself and others to several trial runs before pronouncing it LakeFest-ready, although I must confess that one member of our crew did ask me when the alcohol would be added.

Green Flash

What You Need

Tall shot glass (1.75 ounces)
Limoncello
Club Soda
Blue Curacao
Sailor Jerry spiced rum
Yellow food coloring
Kumquat

What To Do With It

Fill the shot glass to 1/2 full by adding 1/4 glass limoncello and 1/4 glass club soda. Tilt the glass and pour in about 1/8 glass blue curacao. Poured slowly enough, this will pool on the bottom. Finally, with the glass tilted again,  pour in 1/8 glass Sailor Jerry, which will pool on the top.

Now, take a toothpick and pierce the meniscus, and drop in one drop of yellow food coloring. Take a thin slice of kumquat and garnish.

The longer these sit, the more the food coloring will drop down into the cloudy layer of limoncello and club soda, and the blue curacao will mix from the bottom, to try to make them a la minute.

When you're ready to drink, give it a quick swirl with a toothpick or straw to transform it from something resembling a sunset into an electric green concoction...just like what happens with a real green flash!

Biltong

All my life I thought I liked beef jerky.  Recently, a partner at my wife's firm, to whom, to protect her identity, I shall refer as "Cathy Altman," informed me that I actually like biltong. Beef jerky, she said, is just chewy, under seasoned, nasty stuff.

No, not this kind of Impala...



In contrast, biltong (the by-product of hanging an impala in your garage for a month or so to cure and dry), is thin, crispy, and tasty.  Apparently, I'm part Zimbabwean, and didn't even know it.



In reality, when I lived in Manhattan, Kansas, the jerky they sold out of K-State was just like how Cathy describes biltong. It's been my measuring stick against which all other jerky is judged. Frankly, without being overly "confident," mine is pretty damn close.



And according to Cathy, it reminds her of dried impala.  So I'm declaring it good.

Biltong (Beef Jerky)



What You Need

3 pounds of eye of round, sliced into 3/8-1/2 inch slices

3/4 small can of tomato paste (about 2 tablespoons)

juice of 1 lime

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tbsp ground coffee (the espresso variety)

2 tbsp molasses

2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp salt

2 cup boiling water
2-3 tbsp liquid smoke (if you're using a dehydrator instead of a smoker)

Kosher salt

Fresh ground black pepper

What To Do with It

Cut the meat into strips 1/4-1/2 inch thick, depending on what you're going to use for dehydration. Thinner for a dehydrator, thicker for a smoker.



Mix all the other ingredients in a gallon plastic bag, then add the meat, place in a refrigerator and let it sit 24 hours.

Lay your meat out on your drying rack. Sprinkle about 1/2 tsp kosher salt per pound on top, and coat fairly liberally with black pepper (I give about 1 turn for each 4 square inches of meat).

Dry it until it's just a bit crispy.  12-14 hours on a dehydrator, 8-10 on a smoker (at about 150 degrees).



A word of warning. Biltong has a strange effect on people. For instance, it turns my father into Gollum:

Mom: "Jim, where'd you get the jerky?"

Dad (who had gone to my house to drop something off while I was at work): "Thomas gave it to me."