You've got me turning up I'm turning down, I'm turning in I'm turning 'round

[venta]

On a whim, at the weekend, I picked up a guinea fowl for Sunday dinner. I was milling about in the butcher's wondering what to buy and figured well, why not. I've never cooked guinea fowl before, so had a little hunt through the cookbook shelf and decided to go for a pot-roasting recipe of Jamie Oliver's. Mr Oliver himself may well be an irritating little sprunt, but his recipes are usually decent.

Guinea fowl pot-roasted with blood oranges[*], celery and sage gave me a few problems, though. The recipe could have been written a lot more clearly, but the issues were all to do with actual bird-wrangling. Maybe there's something obvious which you lot all know that I don't.

So, you clean your guinea fowl up, stuff it with thinly-sliced celery, oranges lemons and thyme, and truss it up tidily. The you heat up a pan on the stove, and seal your guinea fowl all over with olive oil. And boy, is that tricky.

Have you ever tried to turn a whole, trussed bird over in a pan without ripping the skin? Once you've turned it a few times and it's become even more oily and slippery, flipping it over onto its breast is quite a skill. One which, it appears, I don't have. Does everyone else own special textured, heat-proof silicon gloves, or some other bird-shifting utensils?

Anyway, I bodged my way through that bit. Next stop: butter, sage, garlic and white wine in the pan. Heat up, shove in oven. Inspect at intervals to top the wine up, and the bird does a roast/steam combo while I sort the vegetables out.

Once it was done, Mr Oliver reckons I should lift it "carefully" out of the pan, and put it to rest upside down (ie breast-side down). OK. I'm happy with the whole idea in principle. But in practice... the bird is now not only intractable and slithery, but roasting hot. A tip or two on exactly how one performs this operation "carefully" and without burning one's mitts wouldn't have gone amiss.

(I went for lifting it onto one plate, putting another over the top, and flipping the entire outfit. This worked, so long as you consider covering most of the hob/worktop with roasting juice to be acceptable fall-out.)

OK, now he says to take the fat out of the roasting pan, throw in some wine, heat it all up and bingo! Gravy. No problems, I can do that. Oh, and what am I adding to this gravy? "Simply shake the stuffing out of the cavity and into the gravy".

Er, right. So not content with making me turn a 225° bird upside down, you now want me to pick it up and shake it? Excellent. I'll just do that, then. Get Outkast on the stereo.

Actually, I didn't shake. I scooped some of the stuffing out with a spoon, and served it on the plate rather than in the gravy. Mind you, I'm not sure if that was a good plan. The gravy came out very strange - nice, but very, very strong tasting, more like a gravy concentrate than anything else. Possibly it would have benefitted from some lemons and celery.

The stuffing was supposed to steam itself cooked, by the way, and indeed the lemons went nicely jammy. The celery was still very crunchy - which was pretty much what I'd expected from a cooking time of around 45 mintues. It's not clear whether this was what the man intended, but that was quite strange too.

I need to work on my presentation, too. And, er, learn to carve properly.



I like the roast/steam idea, and will probably try that again. Although I might revert to my customary practice of just putting a whole lemon inside the bird. (I do make proper stuffing, but think it's just nicer if it's cooked separately.)

[*] OK, so I didn't quite play by the rules. I don't like oranges (and they don't like me) so I used lemons.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I'd probably saute the celery first to soften it. And use fennel or something instead because celery is awful.

Barbecue tongs are useful for turning large or oddly-shaped pieces of meat while sealing in the pan. Though I'd just probably not worry about breaking the skin, and use a carving fork and spatula.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do like celery - and yes, I'd have sauteéd it first, too, but figured I'd follow the recipe for once. I regard fennel as much more risky, because undercooked fennel tastes of TEH ANISEED and is therefore bad.

We did speculate about tongs, actually, and I think that might have been a good idea. Still think shaking a bird that's just come out of the oven is a bit optimistic, though!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

See, I don't like aniseed much, but I do like fennel in things. I'm weird like that though.

Not sure about the 'shake out some of the stuffing' thing, no. I'd have been tempted to just stick a lemon wedge and a few thyme sprigs up its bum, and dump the rest into the pan with the wine etc right from the start. Much less faff.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, because the recipe was for two fowl and I was only cooking one, I did absent-mindedly end up with twice as much stuffing as needed, so that would have been trivial :(

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

If you were Jamie Oliver you'd have a stainless steel guineafowl-manipulator with a little wooden handle. Ideal for turning and shaking.

[venta.livejournal.com]

... and probably purchasable as part of his cookware range, costing £39.99 :)

[dave [earth.li] (from livejournal.com)]

I use metal tongs, sort of spring loaded.

It turns out they are available from the JO kitchen range for only a tenner (search for Jamie Oliver Tongs).

Many other brands are available, but I find the ones with anti-scratch silicone tips don't grip food very well. They're great for picking up loads of hot food - including scotch eggs/poppadoms out of hot oil.

[triskellian]

I do indeed own a special textured, heat-proof silicon glove. Just one of it, and it's a bit too small, really, but although this was obvious as soon as it arrived from the interwebs, I never quite got round to sending it back for a different size, so figured I'd just start using it. It's awesome, and I keep meaning to get another one, but since I've only got one, I'd have used that and a handy fork or something to wrangle the bird.

(I also have*, less usefully, a kind of silicon roasting-meat sling, which sits under the meat and has handles at the sides, so you can pick it up by the handles and then the meat will slide off it because although it's got little grippy bits, they're not much use.)

(*Or possibly gave away at a kitchen swap since we never use it.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I did get some snuggly new oven gloves for Christmas which are excellent for getting pans out of the oven, but I figured they were a bit, well, fluffy for handling roast poultry. Never mind that they'd absorb all the greease. The only silicon glove I've ever seen is this sort of thing (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastrad-Orka-Small-Silicone-Oven/dp/B0019QNMJK) which, while they're apparently great for picking up hot roasting tins, I suspect are too stiff and for anything requiring actual dexterity.

The sling does sound like the sort of thing that sounds like a good idea in the shop, though :)

[triskellian]

Yep, that's the bunny. They are indeed not as dextrous as actual hands. OTOH, they are significantly more dextrous than hands which are having the skin burnt off them by a 200° bird, and significantly less fluffy and more dextrous than ordinary oven gloves.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

You bought me one of these big, bumbly gloves years ago and, as I always start a turkey off breast down for about 45 mins, I use that glove and a large wooden spatula for flipping it over - and we're talking 10lb turkey here, not a titchey guinea fowl. Shaking stuffing out of a cooked bird is the sort of damnfool idea only a telechef could come up with.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, yours is the only one I've seen in the flesh silicon. I didn't realise you used it to turn the turkey over, and I'm still surprised it isn't too bumbly for birdwrangling.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

I use a pair of forks for turning birds (and indeed joints of bigger animals); provided you're careful about how you put them in, it's both safe and easy to disguise the holes. Carving I can't help with - I'm capable of using a knife to turn a big lump of meat into several smaller ones, but there's never anything very tidy about it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd probably use for forks for (say) beef but always try and keep poultry skin whole, as I think it's nicer that way.

I think the chief carving problem yesterday was that the knife needed sharpening. I mean, the chief of the readily soluble problems, my fundamental lack of ability will be harder to fix :)

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

That *is* Turning Japanese, isn't it? Do I get my first kudo of the year? Can't think of anything worth posting that abuts oranges and Japanese. I think they drink more sake than Grand Marnier, but I could be wrong.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It is, and you may have your kudo... it was really all about the turning, this post. The Japanese was probably Saturday night, when I was making miso soup, stewed aubergines, edamame, and rice to go with the sashimi we bought from the fish shop :)

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Add some cunning grab-loops with creative knotting when trussing the bird another time?

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

I can't get the kudo being too late, so I will merely opine that a pair of tongs are actually an awesome piece of kitchen equipment.

[venta.livejournal.com]

And I shall opine: bah, stocktaking!

;)

[grumblesmurf.livejournal.com]

Is sprunt a portmanteau? If so, I likely agree, but can't for the life of me figure out the first part...

[venta.livejournal.com]

It isn't, actually. It began with a friend of mine (who was doing triathlon training) saying "I haven't sprinted for years. Is it 'sprinted'? It doesn't sound right."

I suggested sprant, and we compromised on sprunt. The decided that sprunt was a good word for JO.

I don't think there was much logic (though there was quite a lot of wine.)