Category: Duck + Game

This was probably the easiest Christmas dish I’ve ever cooked. The two Cornish hens I bought in Chinatown cost me less than $10. All I had to do was ask the butcher to cut off the head and the feet. My large Dutch oven fit both of them that I was able to brown and roast under 45 minutes. The first time I tried this recipe, I used Silkie chicken. This time, I used the game hens but made the marinade with pomegranate molasses rather than seeds. My favorite part is sautéeing the orange peels in butter until fragrant–one of the least expensive ways to make a dish smell and look festive. I wish you were here. Merry Christmas.

Ingredients:
2 Cornish game hens, rinsed and patted dry
1 cup Marsala
2 tbsps pomegranate molasses
fresh sage leaves
a handful of mint leaves, chopped
zest of 1 orange, cut into 1/4-inch strips
1 tbsp butter
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. Make marinade. In a small bowl, mix the Marsala with the pomegranate and mint. Set aside, covered, for 1 hour.
2. When ready to cook, preheat oven to 350º. Season the birds inside and out with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine. In a Dutch oven, heat the butter with olive oil over high heat. Add 3 sage leaves and cook for 1 minute. Brown the hens on all sides. Lower the heat and add the rest of the sage leaves.
3. Transfer the pot to the oven and roast the hens for 7 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, drizzle 3 tablespoons of the marinade and dot with some butter. Baste the hens with the juices and roast for another 10 minutes or until the juices run clear when the thighs are pierced with a fork.
4. Meanwhile, in a small pot, heat some more butter and cook orange zest for 5 minutes until the zest absorbs the butter. Remove from heat.
5. Transfer the hens in a dish, sprinkle with zest and drizzle with pan juices.

Related post/s:
Where to buy Cornish hens and pomegranate molasses
Or else, use Silkie chicken

Because the suckling pig feast was a success, I put my name down for the Christmas goose. Cameron named her Shazia, after another NY1 reporter who does the Zagat reviews on TV. It wasn’t difficult to carry her home like Rog; I just put her in my tote bag, dragged it to work and made the trip uptown. I picked up Shazia last week after Mike from Tamarack Hollow Farm hand-plucked the feathers for about two hours. I thought you could just submerge any bird in hot water and the feathers will easily come off like for chickens, but I learned that because geese are water fowls, they have oily feathers. Soaking them in water would only repel their natural oil–you really have to hand-pluck them.

We didn’t do anything special for Shazia. We only let her thaw in the fridge for a couple of days and just went to Chef Weld’s Brooklyn apartment for our holiday dinner. I saw him tie it up and rub it with some spices and next thing I know, it was in the oven. I saw him remove the goose fat and later used some of it for gravy with the liver. It was a huge bird, about 11 pounds, and I was a bit curious at how long it was, instead of, say, round like a turkey.

We spent a couple of hours hanging out and eating sausages, prosciutto and cheese while the bird stayed in the oven. There was sparkling wine and a few bottles of red. I was so glad to finally open a bottle I’ve been saving–a 2004 Châteauneuf du Pape. Sharing it with good company and good food made it even tastier.

A bowl of roasted potatoes was served together with some sautéed purple cabbage and apples and frisée and endive with roasted red beets. It was my first goose so I was very surprised that it didn’t turn out tasting like duck, as I expected. The meat was, for a lack of a better word, tighter. It was also more gamey and had a taste of offal. A few pieces later, I was already full. It was like eating a big chunk of beef steak.

Christmas goose to me is very Charles Dickens. In Manila, we always had ham for noche buena or crispy pata (pig’s thigh) with the other traditional Filipino dishes, but I suppose the Victorian way was to always included game meats because they were expensive back in the days. My goose cost a lot of money but I bet we had a better time than the Cratchits.

Related post/s:
Get your own Christmas goose from Tamarack Hollow Farm
Suckling pig from Tamarack Hollow Farm
Chef Weld also cooks a mean egg

For Thanksgiving this year, we had two roasted turkeys, one ham, five black sea bass, lumpia, or Filipino spring rolls, and three different kinds of salads to serve to eighteen people who celebrated with us in the apartment. We thought there would be a lot of leftovers but we were wrong. Our guests were good eaters and they cleaned everything off their plates. With the small amount of turkey meat left, I made some tacos and I made some quesadillas for lunch the next day. After eating a couple of them, I thought, why not mix them together? I call them tacodillas.

Ingredients:
leftover Thanksgiving turkey meat, off the bone, shredded
soft flour tortillas
Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1 tomato, chopped
1 small red onion, finely chopped
cilantro, finely chopped
lime juice
flaming cock hot sauce

1. Cut a tortilla in half. Prepare on a skillet. Lay one half of the tortilla and add some cheese and turkey meat, then follow with the rest of the filling. Cover with the other half of the tortilla.
2. Turn the heat on to medium. Using a heavy but smaller pot lid, press the tortilla to flatten. The heat will melt the cheese inside and make the two tortillas stick to each other. Turn and brown the other side using a wooden spatula or a flat spoon.

Related post/s:
Where to get Sriracha, or what I call the flaming cock hot sauce

Adapted from memory

Ingredients:
For the turkey rub:
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
3 stalks of scallions, chopped
2 tbsps oregano
2 tbsps coriander
2 tbsps paprika
salt and pepper to taste

1 frozen turkey, thawed for at least eight hours outside the fridge
1 apple, cored and diced
1 peach, diced
1 lemon, sliced
1 small box of raisins

1. Combine all rub ingredients and purée in a blender. Pour into saucepan and simmer, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Cool and set aside while turkey is thawing.
2. When ready to roast, preheat oven to 350º. Wash turkey and dry with paper towel. Empty the carcass and stuffed with the fruits, lemon and raisins. Bathe the turkey with the rub. Wrap turkey with aluminum foil and set on a roasting pan.
3. Roast for at least six hours, carefully turning the bird during the last hour of cooking. For an extra 30 minutes, open the foil and raise oven temperature to 375º to brown the skin. Remove from oven and let the turkey rest, loosely covered, before carving.