paprika – Gourmet Project

The recipe

The next few recipes are from a cocktail party we held in honour of a friend’s thesis defense. We invited her to celebrate her accomplishment, and be called Doctor a lot, at an intimate soirÃ©e at our place. I was planning a menu around her favourite dishes, and counting on eight to ten people. The day before the party, I was informed that it was going to be more like thirty, and possibly up to fifty people, and that I knew almost none of them. My first reaction was to start dusting.

Most of the time I’m pretty relaxed about the state of the apartment, and the mounting pile of dishes bothers me not at all. The second I hear that company’s coming though, I start channeling my mother. I worked myself up into a right state, gave up on the food, and decided that the best I could do would be to provide an empty and clean space for these hoards to descend upon. Then I thought that even if I wasn’t providing any food, I should really have ice, lemons, and limes on hand. From there I sold myself on baking a congratulatory cake, and decided reprising a couple of the great appetizers from The Project wouldn’t be too hard. The day of I convinced myself that adding a (soon to be blogged) dip would be in the realm of the reasonable. Once the guests had arrived I remembered that we had eggs in the fridge, and couldn’t think of a good reason not to devil them. I spent a good chunk of the evening in the kitchen cooking, but that worked out well as it wasn’t really my party. My dining companion and our newest doctor of philosophy entertained the twenty or so people who showed up, and I catered in the background.

This was a by the book deviled egg recipe, no fancy flourishes, just straight to business. First you hard boil a bunch of eggs, cool them, peel them, and halve them lengthwise, then you remove the yolks mash them up with mayo, Dijon, and cayenne, and pipe them back into the waiting egg whites. You may then garnish with smoked paprika and fresh chives.

Since this was a last minute hors d’oeuvre, I decided to skip the pretty star tip, and just pipe them with a ziplock minus a corner. Chives are lovely with deviled eggs, but the vegetable drawer had run dry, so no chives for you. All in all these were some pretty messy slapdash deviled eggs on my part, but they were devoured before anyone had a chance to notice. As is almost always the case with deviled eggs, they didn’t garner much praise, but they disappeared. If I’d asked people to tell me what they ate, they’d probably have forgotten to mention the eggs, but there was a peculiarly disappointed look that crossed the faces of our guests when they scanned the table and found the tray empty.

Are deviled eggs hopelessly outdated? probably, but who cares? They’re awesome, and I know I’m pleased to see a plate of these on a buffet table. The recipe was very standard, but totally solid. It’s very comforting to know that with a dozen eggs and a jar of mayonnaise I can put out a universal crowd pleaser with only slightly more effort than making an egg salad sandwich.

110. Moroccan-Style Roast Cornish Hens with Vegetables p.392

The recipe

This was my first experiment with Cornish hens, and I think I’m in love. I watched an episode of Freaks and Geeks the other night. In one scene the mother roasts Cornish hens, and serves them to her skeptical family, who use the hens as puppets for a dance routine, and complain that they want normal food, like chicken. Two things, 1) Cornish hens are chickens, and 2) that show was awesome, it really bugged me when they canceled it. That episode was poking fun at the status of little birds as icons of the ’70’s and 80’s food revolution, for both good and ill. My dining companion’s mother talks about fancy dinner parties in the early 80’s where the women wore long gloves, and were asked to pick apart quail with a knife and fork. She remembers going home hungry a lot. Game birds are often considered exotic or fancy food, but at least for Cornish hens, they’re just conveniently sized chickens.

This dish emphasized how casual and delicious a Cornish hen can be. You start by making a spice mixture of caraway, salt, garlic, honey, lemon juice, olive oil, paprika, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, and pepper. Then you cube zucchini, turnips, red peppers, butternut squash, and onions, toss them in with half the spice mix, chopped tomatoes, and chicken stock. You then take the backbones out of the hens and halve them, toss them in the spice mix, and lay them in a roasting pan on top of the vegetables. The whole thing goes into a 425 oven covered in foil for an hour, then uncovered for the last half hour to let the birds brown up.

There were a lot of ingredients to the dish, but most of them were in the cupboard. There was a good deal of prep work to be done, particularly taking a rock-hard butternut squash apart, and peeling turnip, but nothing too complicated. The results were absolutely fantastic. The use of smaller Cornish hens makes this dish possible. A full sized chicken might not get cooked through before the veg turned to mush, but with little birds everything comes out together. The juices drip off the birds and flavour the vegetables, which in turn perfume the hens.

I’ve been pretty harsh to the middle eastern / north African dishes I’ve made thus far. I just can’t get behind sweetened meat dishes. This one however, had dollop of honey, carefully balanced with lots of spice and some more harshly flavoured vegetables like the turnips. The little sweet note of honey was much appreciated, it was present but not too assertive.

This dish was just delicious, I couldn’t get enough of it. I couldn’t wait for lunch time, so I had some left-overs for breakfast. The Hens were perfectly roasted with an amazingly crisp skin and juicy tender inside. They were dense and meaty, with a deep chicken flavour. The vegetables roasted wonderfully, and the spice mix was an excellent compliment to all the flavours in this dish. I’d happily make this again and again. Moroccan-style roast Cornish hens with vegetables, you’ve earned your five mushroom rating.