A fowl of a different type: guinea hen

One of the ways that my palette has grown over the years is by trying different proteins. I had read about guinea hen for years, but had never tried it. In fact, I don't think I even saw it on a menu. It may have been there, but I just went past it.
Being introduced to purveyors like "D'artagnan" and stimulated by my own curiosity, I started looking at some of these other proteins. Guinea hen, as I learned, is a fowl that has not really been completely domesticated. Poultry raisers have tried however, with some success. The birds are somewhat smaller than chicken, and leaner. I'm told that, as live birds, they have a tendency to scream with a very ugly sound. I've not heard it, but I've seen them live, wandering around the San Francisco zoo. Keepers tell me that they are a problem, because they are easy prey for some of the other wildlife that live there.
Honestly, I'm with the wildlife there. They are GOOD. Somewhat gamier than chicken, but not as gamy as ducks (Incidentally, in trying to write gamy I wrote gay. I have no experience with the sexual practices of either guinea hen or duckes, but if you do, by all means, let me know). And in preparing them, you sort of go in between what you do for chickens and for ducks, with one exception: duck is fatty. Chicken is fatty. Guinea hen is leaner. So, you have to make adjustments. As I shall explain.
As with duck, guinea hen breast is very tender and soft. Guinea hen legs are more muscular, stringier and tougher. If you start thinking "braise," you are right. So whether you are cooking guinea hen , pintade (French), or faraona (Italian), stick to braising for legs. Here's how I do it. It's a modification of a dish I do with duck legs, and as Ben pointed out to me, it is, essentially , coq au vin. Indeed it is. And here's some advice: when you are doing a bird dish, be it chicken, or duck, or guinea hen, or whatever, stick to one 'part' of the bird. Dont' try making dishes where you mix breast and leg, unless you're cooking the whole bird. What works for a breast of chicken/duck/guinea hen is not going to work for the legs, and vice versa.

OK, here we go. I will tell you that when I first made this dish, I used to brown the legs ahead of time, thinking I would get more flavor out of them that way. I was w rong. Browning the legs seals them and does not permit the sauce you're making to get in. So resist that temptation. Trust me. They are going to brown enough.

This is again, an "Annalena special." You do very little work, put the thing in the oven, and get a wonderful dish at the end.

You start by roughly chopping an onion and two carrots. Quarter inch is good. Then brown them in some olive oil and a bit of salt. DON'T stir them. You want the browning to happen, especially on the carrots. So cook them at medium heat for about five minutes. When the vegetables are done, dump them into a big baking dish. You're going to be making anywhere from six to ten legs, so you need room.

If you have been following this blog, you know that, the night before, or the morning of, you salt the legs, and let them sit in the fridge uncovered. Wait until you see what this does to a lean cut like guinea hen legs. They're going to look like they were roasted already.

Preheat your oven to 450. Put the legs on the vegetables. Add a few sprigs of thyme, and a couple of bay leaves. Now, pour a cup and a half of a well flavored red wine over the meat, and then add chicken stock, to bring it to 3/4 of the way to the top of the legs. I then squeeze the juice of a couple of mandarins, or one orange, over all of it, and add the peels to the mix. Cover the dish with foil and bake it at 450 for 20 minutes. After twenty minutes, drop the heat to 350 and bake for another 45. Finally, take the foil off, reverse the legs in the dish, and bake for another 20 minutes. You will get a slightly bubbling sauce, and a nicely browned product.

What you do next is up to you. You have options on this sauce. Even though the meat is very lean, I find that the sauce is a bit greasy and that it frequently needs a dose of salt. So, you can take the legs out and let the sauce sit, until the fat comes to the top. Usually though, this doesn't happen. Instead, what happens is the sauce gels, because a lot of collagen comes into the liquid from the legs. What you do in that case is you heat it up, and try to skim fat as it comes to the top. You can also strain out the vegetables if you like. Some people find that more refined; however, we know about Annalena's LACK of refinement, don't we? So I leave them in. I like the flavor. I DO sometimes add a bit of cornstarch to some cold sauce, and blend it in to thicken the sauce. And there are times where I just want the citrus "kick" and squeeze another orange or mandarin into it at the end. You could do lemons too, but I like the feel of the orange in this dish.

In baking any kind of bird leg, you will find your volume reduce substantially. I would suggest you plan on two legs per person, with a normal appetite. If you feed gym rats (as I sometimes do), then I would plan on three of these.

One thing you MAY want to do. As originally conceived, this dish calls on you to bake it with the skin side DOWN and to put it right side up only at the last stage of the baking. Frankly, I haven't found that it makes any difference. The aim is to allow the presentation side to be nice and brown, from exposure to the heat, and no liquid. Again, I have not found this to make a difference. It's your call.

You can make this with duck legs. Then I would suggest you cut the number to six, unless you have small legs. And that you DEFINITELY plan on skimming fat. It's a no brainer with duck.

For those of you who cook regularly, you may see the striking resemblance to coq au vin. Indeed, when I first talked about this dish with Ben, he remarked that his last meal would be coq au vin, and that it reminded him of that. I didn't see the connect until I started cooking. Yup, I can see it now.

And if there is anyone brave enough out there (besides Ben), to try this with rabbit sometime, call me over. I am REALLY eager to see the rabbit version of this dish. Hmmm. Maybe " a dinner for adventurers" soon.