Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (42 page)

Garnish the birds with whole sage leaves, and put them in a pot or saucepan on top of some slices of untrimmed prosciutto. Season with olive oil, salt, and pepper. When they have browned, add a bit of butter and some broth, and then simmer until done. Before removing from the fire, squeeze a lemon on them and serve in their sauce over toasted bread. Salt them very little, on account of the prosciutto and the broth. During the season when verjuice
⁵⁷
is made, you can use that instead of lemon juice. As the old saying goes:

Quando sol est in leone,
Bonum vinum cum popone,
et agrestum cum pipione
.
(When the sun is in Leo,
Wine goes well with melon,
And verjuice with pigeon.)

I would like to make it clear once and for all that names do not mean much in my kitchen, and that I give no importance to high-sounding titles. If an Englishman should tell me that I have not made this dish, which also goes by the odd name of “piccion paio,”
⁵⁸
according to the customs of his country, I do not care a fig. All I care is that it be judged tasty, and that is the end of the matter. Take:

a young but large squab

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of lean milk-fed veal, or a chicken breast

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of thinly sliced untrimmed prosciutto

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of thinly sliced salted tongue

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of butter

1/2 a glass of good skimmed broth

1 hard-boiled egg

Cut the bird into small pieces at the joints, discarding the head and legs. Cut the veal or chicken breast into small cutlets and pound them with the blunt edge of a knife. Cut the prosciutto and the tongue into strips about one finger wide. Cut the egg into 8 sections.

Take an ovenproof oval platter made of metal or porcelain and arrange on it, in layers, first half of the squab and veal, then half of the prosciutto and tongue, half of the butter scattered here and there in tiny bits, and half (or four sections) of the egg. Season with very little salt, pepper, and some aromatic spices, and repeat the procedure with the rest of the ingredients until you have formed a mound. Then pour in the broth, making sure that it is cold; it should reach the inner rim of the platter. Very little of the broth will be absorbed during cooking.

Now make the dough to cover the dish, using the following amounts:

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of flour

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of butter

1 teaspoon of wine spirits

1 teaspoon of sugar

the juice of one lemon wedge

1 egg yolk

salt to taste

Mix the flour with the other ingredients; add warm water if necessary to make a rather soft dough. Knead thoroughly, throwing it down hard on the pastry board. Let it rest a little, and then roll it out, folding it over four or five times and finally using a ridged rolling pin to make a sheet about the thickness of a large coin. Cover the dish with this dough; if you have some left over, garnish the top with decorations cut out of the extra dough. Brush it with egg yolk, and then bake this pasticcio (for that’s really what it is) in a Dutch oven. Serve hot.

I think that this dish turns out even better if it is prepared in the following way, which gives it a more Italian character and taste. First cook the squab and other meats halfway with the same amount of butter, seasoning with salt, pepper, and spices. Then arrange the meats on the platter as indicated, also adding the sauce from the meats as well as the skimmed broth. You can also add chicken giblets, sweetbreads, and truffles, adjusting the seasoning as necessary.

Cut the squabs into quarters or large pieces at the joints and put them on the fire with a slice of prosciutto, a little butter, and a
bouquet garni
. Season with salt and pepper. When the squabs start to dry out, add some broth, and when they are halfway done, add their giblets, some chopped sweetbreads, and sliced fresh mushrooms or dried mushrooms (soaked first in warm water), or truffles. If you use truffles, however, they should be added almost at the end of the cooking process. Blanch the sweetbreads before adding them, and skin them if they come from a large animal. After moistening the birds with stock, pour in half a glass of white wine for each two squabs. But first reduce the wine by about half in a separate pan. Continue to simmer the squabs, then add another bit of butter rolled in flour, or else just flour, to thicken the sauce. Lastly, just before serving remove the prosciutto and the
bouquet garni
, and squeeze a lemon over the squabs.

You can also cook young chickens this way, garnishing them with giblets instead of sweetbreads.

The name of this dish comes perhaps from its shape, which is similar to the musical instrument of the same name.
⁵⁹
Chop some prosciutto, onion, celery, and carrot, add a bit of butter and put on the fire with one or two squabs, depending on the number of people you are serving. Add the giblets from the squabs and some chicken giblets, if you have them. Season with salt and pepper, and when the pigeons have browned, add broth and simmer until done. Make sure, however, that there is some sauce left over. Strain the sauce and toss in some macaroni which you have cooked beforehand, but not completely, in salted water, and keep near the fire, stirring from time to time. Make a little bechamel sauce, then break the squabs apart at the joints and discard the neck, head, legs, and backbones if you do not want to bone them completely, which would be better. Cut the giblets into rather large pieces and remove the gristle from the gizzards.

When the macaroni has absorbed the sauce, season with Parmesan cheese, bits of butter, small cubes or, better yet, thin slices of untrimmed prosciutto, nutmeg, and truffle shavings—if you do not have truffles, use a handful of dried mushrooms softened in water. Lastly, stir in the bechamel sauce.

Take a casserole of the appropriate size, grease it with cold butter and line it with shortcrust pastry dough. Pour in the squab mixture, cover with the same dough, and bake. Remove from the oven while still hot, and serve immediately.

With 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of macaroni and two squabs you can make a timbale for ten to twelve people, if they are not big eaters. If you want, you can also make this dish as a pasticcio, as in recipe 349.

Thrushes and other small birds can be stewed like the squabs in recipe 276; in fact, I recommend that you cook them that way, for they are excellent. Pickled olives—that is, olives soaked in brine— are usually added whole, with the pits, when the thrushes are half cooked. Still, it is better to remove the pits by cutting the flesh of the olive with a penknife into a spiral that looks like a whole olive when wrapped on itself.

There was once a gentleman who received six thrushes as a gift. Since his family was in the country at the time, he decided to take the birds to a restaurant and have them roasted for himself. The thrushes were beautiful, fresh and plump like garden warblers. The man was afraid lest they be switched on him, so he marked each thrush by cutting out its tongue. The waiters at the restaurant, who had their suspicions, began to examine the birds to see if they had any distinctive mark, and lo and behold, aided by their own shrewdness they found it. Unwilling to let themselves be outdone in cleverness, or perhaps because the gentlemen’s only generous side was his waistline, they all cried out at once “We will
showhiml”
So they cut the tongues out of six of the scrawniest thrushes they had in the kitchen and prepared those for him, keeping his thrushes for more honored customers. When our friend arrived looking forward to a
scrumptious meal and saw the dry, puny birds, his eyes started out of his head. Turning the birds over and over, he kept saying to himself: “I am confounded! Can these really be my thrushes?” Then, seeing that their tongues had been cut out, sadly he resigned himself to believing that the spit and the fire had worked this metamorphosis.

The first thing the waiters offered to the customers who came in afterward was: “Would you like some nice thrushes today?” And then they proceeded to tell the story of their prank, as it was later recounted to me by one of those who ended up eating the gentleman’s birds.

This dish is called mock thrushes because of the flavor that juniper berries and the combination of ingredients lend to it. It is a dish that many people like, and you would do well to try it.

To make six “thrushes” you need:

300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of lean, boneless milk-fed veal

6 juniper berries

3 chicken livers

3 salted anchovies

3 tablespoons of olive oil

lardoon, as needed

These mock thrushes should look like small, stuffed cutlets; therefore cut the veal into six thin slices, flatten them out, give them a nice shape, and put the scraps aside. The scraps, along with the chicken livers, a bit of lardoon, the juniper berries, the anchovies (cleaned and boned), and a sage leaf, make up the mixture you will use to stuff the veal. So mince everything very fine and season with a little salt and pepper. After filling the veal slices with this mixture and rolling them up, wrap them in a thin slice of lardoon with half a sage leaf between the veal and the salt pork, and then tie them crosswise. I think that 60 grams (about 2 ounces) of lardoon in all should be enough.

Now that you have prepared the cutlets, put them over a high flame in a skillet or an uncovered saucepan with the three tablespoons of olive oil and season again lightly with salt and pepper.
When they have browned all over, pour out the fat, but leave the burnt bits on the bottom of the pan; finish cooking, adding broth a little at a time, because when they are done the cutlets should be almost dry.

Untie and serve over six slices of lightly toasted bread, pouring over them the concentrated sauce that remains in the pan.

These mock thrushes are even good when served cold.

The meat of starlings is tough and of low quality. Therefore these birds need to be prepared in the following way to be edible.

For six starlings, finely chop 1/4 of a large onion with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of fat trimmed from prosciutto, then put on the fire with 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter, three or four small strips of untrimmed prosciutto, and two juniper berries. Place the starlings (whole and ungutted) on top of this mixture; garnish with sage leaves and season with salt and pepper. Turn the birds often, and when they have absorbed the flavor of the battuto, and the onion is nice and golden brown, moisten with a little dry white wine. When that has been absorbed, pour in more wine to make a total of 3 deciliters (about 1-1/4 cups). If you do not have white wine, you can substitute 2 deciliters (about 4/5 of a cup) of water and 1 deciliter (about 3-1/2 fluid ounces) of Marsala wine. Cover the saucepan with a sheet of paper folded four times and held in place by a heavy lid. Simmer over a low fire until completely cooked. Serve with the sauce from the pan.

Cook the birds, but not completely, by roasting them on a spit, seasoning them with salt and olive oil. Remove them from the spit and leave them whole, if they are small birds or thrushes; if they are large, cut the birds into four parts and remove the heads, which you will crush in a mortar along with some other small roasted bird or with some scraps from larger birds. Put a small saucepan on the fire
with some butter, some bits of prosciutto, brown stock or broth, Madeira or Marsala wine in roughly the same amount as the broth, a finely chopped shallot, one or two juniper berries (if you are cooking thrushes), or a bay leaf (if they are some other kind of bird). Season with salt and pepper, and when the mixture has boiled for half an hour strain it, then placing the partially roasted birds in it. Cook until completely done, and serve over small slices of toasted bread.