Rosengarten Classic. Originally Published: ROSENGARTEN REPORT, November 2003.
Oh, ’tis turkey season, to be sure. The amount of turkeys on America’s tables on Thanksgiving Day will be truly staggering; nary a household in the land will lack the Big Bird, our National Trussed, on that November Thursday. And is the seasonal turkey onslaught over then? No siree, Tom. Leftover turkey sandwiches will take us into December…then, quite a few menu-challenged household heads…will choose a turkey reprise for Christmas dinner.
For about a month, every year, it’s the same thing, over and over again: turkey overload time in America.
Now, I’ve no doubt that some people really do like turkey. I’ve also no doubt that what many people really like is the turkey ritual, without actually liking the bird itself very much. In fact, it has become pretty standard among foodies to take a shot at turkeys, and I don’t mean with BBs. “It’s dry,” they say. “It’s stringy. It’s bland. It’s boring.” And, putting aside my own life-long enjoyment of the turkey ritual, I would have to agree with all of the lukewarm gastronomic reactions. Oh, I can enjoy a well-prepared turkey…but it sure ain’t my fave. If it were, for any of us…there’d be a whole heck of a lot more turkey in the oven in those months that don’t start with an N or a D.
So, in recent years, foodies—myself included—have been taking evasive action. One path, quite logically, is to find a better turkey than the supermarket ones so widely used at holiday time. This year, however, I focused on what I think is the most exciting path of all- the turkey alternative!
Here are my top three picks for a festive bird, not a turkey, an un-turkey…that delivers more gastro-thrills than any turkey ever could!
Guinea Hen
Quantity Needed for Six People: 2-3 birds
Cooking Method: 500°F for about 30 minutes, or until the bird reaches 135-140°F internally
Source: Grimaud Farms, Stockton, CA
Wine Choice for Simple Guinea Hen: fairly delicate red wine, like a five-year old Chinon from the Loire Valley
Well, it’s a glorified chicken that tops my list—but there’s a lot more glory than chicken to it! The bird is a native, logically enough, of the West African country of Guinea. From its English-language name, you would assume it’s a female bird (that’s what “hen” usually designates). There is another name you sometimes see—”guinea fowl”—and you might assume that that’s another bird, or that perhaps it’s the male version of the guinea hen. All of this speculation would be wrong! The names “guinea hen” and “guinea fowl” both refer to either female or male versions of the same bird! The males are a little larger, but the plumage is identical. In France, where guinea hen is wildly popular, they avoid the gender issue in the name by calling the bird pintade (or pintadeau, if the bird is young); ditto for Italy, where guinea hen is called faraona.
Textbooks will often tell you how much the guinea hen is reminiscent of the chicken—but I prefer to dwell on the differences! For starters, the meat of the guinea hen is generally darker than the meat of the chicken, probably because the bird has never been fully domesticated. Along with this comes deeper, gamier flavor; the plump breast meat is almost as dark as dark-meat chicken—and amazingly flavorful for breast meat.
All of the meat was silky, moist, tender—which made me distrust the oft-repeated claim that guinea hen has 50% less fat than chicken; if anything, to me, it tasted richer. Some books say you must bard guinea hen, or lard it, or wrap it in bacon. No way—at least not THIS bird, cooked THIS way. Just make sure not to overcook it; the merest hint of rosiness remaining in the meat is a good thing.
Other features that knocked me out were the low-cartilage nature of the leg, the insane meatiness of the wing, and the wonderfully crisp and flavorful skin.
Female Muscovy Duck (Barbary Duck)
Quantity Needed for Six People: 3 birds
Cooking Method: super-slow roast is best
Source: Grimaud Farms, Stockton, CA
Wine Choice for Simple Muscovy Duck: pretty rich red wine, like a 3-4-year-old Cahors from southwest France
Now that we’ve all become much more duck-sophisticated, a couple of duck breeds have become foodie-household words. Everyone is aware of the glories of Moulard duck, the “mule,” the workhorse duck of foie gras, confit, and magret producers. Many consumers are also familiar with the Pekin duck (not “Peking Duck,” which is a dish), originally from China, which became the breed embraced by producers of Long Island duck.
Me…I’d been fascinated for years by the widespread presence on menus in France of “Barbary,” or “Barbarie” duck (usually called “Muscovy” in these parts); if I’d seen it there often, I reasoned, it must be somethin’ good. Got that right. I finally tried a Barbary duck of the female persuasion—and it absolutely flipped me out. Male Muscovy ducks are twice the size—but, according to what I hear, not as delectable.
The Muscovy, unlike the Moulard, or the Pekin…is actually from the New World. Its origins are thought to be in Central America (maybe the French love it because it seems exotic? they do also refer to it as canard d’Inde, or “duck of the indies.”) The skin is a bit thinner than the skins of other ducks, and the meat—which is quite red—is 40% less fatty than the meat of Pekin duck is.
It also makes the best long-cooked roast duck I’ve ever had. And I’m a certified long-cooked roast duck freak.
First of all, however, for those who are not freaks for long-cooking, I roasted the duck a shorter amount of time to see what the meat would be like. At medium-rare, 125°F, the meat is slightly grainier in chew than the meat of other ducks—but it is has a lovely, sweet beefiness. As the temperature rises to 160°F (medium-well), the meat keeps its sweetness and improves in texture; it seems lighter and juicier than other duck meat.
However, if you do buy a Muscovy, and if you can put in the hours…please roast this thing for five hours.
What comes out of the oven after five is the crispiest duck I’ve ever tasted, perhaps owing to the thinness of Muscovy skin. The part of the skin over the leg-thigh assembly was like duck and pork candy. The leg and thigh in general were extraordinary—velvety, tender, deep and gamy in flavor. It is worth roasting this duck just to get at those parts. I must confess, the breast was a bit of a come-down; the breast of the fattier Pekin duck survives the five hours better. But, if you cut the breast into slices, each slice with a ring of crispy skin around it, the result is good. And…a lovely brown sauce on the breast wouldn’t hurt either! For the miraculous leg and thigh—well, I’d advise simply boning them and serving them all by themselves. Lastly, don’t be in a hurry to get that carcass off your cutting board; the Muscovy has all kinds of hidden skin-and-meat pockets that are wonderful to pick at.
Goose
Quantity Needed for Six People: one bird
Cooking Method: super-slow roast is best
Source: D’artagnan
Wine Choice for Simple Goose: very rich and tannic red wine, like a big, young California Cabernet
Goose comes with lots of baggage, good and bad.
The good baggage is the bird’s romantic history. In the ancient world, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were famous goose-lovers. Germans and French set the tone in the Middle Ages; when a city was conquered in battle, the standard reward for the chief of the cross-bow team was a goose. A bit later—on September 29, 1588, in fact—Elizabeth I was feasting on goose when she heard about the defeat of the Spanish Armada; she decreed that forever after Englishmen should eat goose on that date. By the time Dickens was writing “A Christmas Carol,” the bird was even more famously eaten on the title’s eponymous holiday. “Bob said he didn’t believe there was ever such a goose cooked,” Dickens wrote of the Cratchit Christmas meal. “Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration.”
To modern chefs, “universal admiration” does not seem a readily attainable goal; the bad goose baggage is fear—fear of universal scorn, in fact. “Your goose is cooked” means trouble—but, to most home chefs, the very act of cooking that goose is even more trouble! And rightly so—because we’ve all had geese with tons of fat pouring out from under the skin, paradoxically dry meat, and a low proportion of meat to bone, at that.
There are three factors to consider in order to avoid these problems and to cook a goose that, in fact, brings wild “universal admiration”: 1) the quality of the bird itself; 2) the cooking method; and 3) the serving method.
As to the quality: I would recommend a domesticated goose—wild geese, due to their extra exertion, are more likely to be lean and stringy. To insure the best possible roast, get a domesticated goose that’s between 8 and 12 pounds; any older than that, and a wet cooking method, like braising, becomes advisable. Happily, geese lay their eggs in the spring—and the young geese are at a perfect weight just in time for Christmas!
When I cook a goose, they undergo the long, slow-cooking method that I originally invented for duck. Perfect! This yields the most tender goose I’ve ever tasted—not to mention one with a wonderfully deep, rich flavor, something like beefy duck. The most amazing feature of all was the ultra-crispy skin—and the fact that it stayed crispy for an hour after cooking!
For serving, I like to make sure that all of the meat on everyone’s plate is covered with wide patches of crispy skin. Some of the skin will be attached to the meat (as on the breast), but some will be skin you’ve removed from non-meaty spots that have a good cover of excess skin. That works out fine—because some of the meaty spots aren’t covered with skin. Just mix and match on everyone’s plate, creating skin-topped bundles of goose meat.
This is one bird that I really like to accompany with a sauce—principally because the breast meat, not matter how perfect the bird and the cooking, still is a little dry.
Photos Via: BigStockPhoto
