Here chicky chicky: stuffed poussin

My beloved readers , you all know that Annalena trolls cooking websites, magazines, and so forth, anywhere she can get ideas for her kitchen. Some would call it stealing. Well.. whenever I use a recipe from somewhere else, I attribute it and of course, sometimes give a whole hearted rave, and sometimes give a critique. But you always know from whence it came. And you also know, sometimes in ridiculous detail, how I changed it. Here is one such tale.
One of my favorite cooks from television, is Maryanne Esposito. I know purists critique her methods, and her recipes. Well, this is what I have to say about that: get over it. I do not think I have ever heard Signora Esposito say "this is the ONLY way this dish is acceptable," like some chefs have. I consider her cooking to be rooted solidly in Italian-American tradition, rather than "Italian." Yes, she adapts some of the rules of Italian cooking (especially the no dairy with fish rule), but plays fast and free with others.
Ragazzi, it's YOUR kitchen. If you choose to make the recipe I give to you here with turkey rather than baby chicken, go for it. DO give me some credit, however, but don't blame the recipe, or MOI if it doesn't work.

This is all by way of saying that I took one of Maryanne's recipes and changed it. And I love it.
On her site, I found a recipe for chicken cutlets, stuffed with spinach and fontina cheese.

Now, does THAT sound good? Oh, yes it does. And when I tell you it's easy, you may not believe me, but it is.
As far as I know, chicken cutlets are not a part of classic Italian cuisine. Italians eat their birds on the bone, and don't bother with the paillards or boneless dishes that you'll see in French cooking. Americans, however, like their chicken cutlets: they are easy to work with, cook quickly, and don't leave a mess. All good things.

Chicken on the bone is better. It is NOT a fast thing to cook, but we're going to get around that here, with baby chicken, or 'poussin," or as we called them before we all became foodies, cornish game hens (and I thank my friend, the late and much missed Walter Fankhanel for that bit of information).

A poussin is a chicken that is about six weeks old. (No black emails to me, please, for advocating eating 'baby birds'. What are you doing when you eat an egg Mr complainer? HMMMMM?). They are milder than chicken (which is pretty mild), because they haven't developed much dark meat yet.

As I wrote above, poussin and cornish game hens are the same thing, but somehow, the poussins taste better to me. It may be a question of how they are raised. I have the sense that poussin are mostly from smaller, "greener" farms. I've never taken to the taste of the "game hens," but I love poussin. And we had some in our freezer. You will know that I am currently in the process of cleaning out that deep freeze, so poussin was on the menu for the week. When I saw Maryanne's recipe, a bit of an adaptation was all that was necessary, and we had ourselves a delicious easy lunch today.

The southernmost farms who show up at the farmers market are selling field spinach. This is usually the first FARMED crop (dandelion greens , ramps, and morels, are foraged). So, the recipe was timely. Coincidentally, I had a started piece of fontina cheese in the fridge (although mozzarella, or any melting cheese would work here). The other ingredients: onion and garlic. And olive oil. If you don't have these in your kitchen, well, Annalena cannot help you.

Let's cook. Let's start with the spinach. For two birds, you need about 3/4 of a pound. Just increase it, depending on how many birds you're doing, proportionately. Before someone starts on "DUDE. What about 3 birds? my answer is to go to a heavy pound and a quarter. To cook spinach, take a look at it. If it's dirty, wash it. If it's not, put it into a pot with a tablespoon of water. Put washed spinach into a pot after you've washed it. Cover it, turn on the heat to medium high, and come back in five minutes.

You will have reduced the spinach to about 1/8 of its starting volume. If some of the spinach seems uncooked, just rotate the greens, so the cooked stuff on the bottom is on the top, and you're fine. Turn off the heat. Put the spinach in a bowl, and let it cool. When it is cool (BE PATIENT), squeeze out the liquid, and chop it roughly. Put it aside, and then in a pan, add a few tablespoons of olive oil, a chopped onion, and 2 cloves of garlic. Here, you DO need some surgical precision. You want the garlic nice and small because, if it's too big, you may bite into a piece of it instead of cheese, and that may not be what you want.

Cook the onion and garlic for about five minutes, and then add the spinach. Swirl it around, and then grate a little nutmeg into this.

Please don't omit the nutmeg. It does for spinach what basil does for tomatoes. Then add a pinch of salt.

Chop up about 3/4 cup of fontina cheese. Get the cheese with the brown rind. That's the Italian variety. The Danish variety has a red rind and doesn't work well.

And don't ask me why a cheese is from Italy and Denmark. I just cook.

Okay, what you have just made is your stuffing. Now, let's get to the birds. You can get poussins that are "boned," or whole. There will be a difference in how long you cook them, but not too much. Spoon the filling into the birds. If you have boned poussin, you may need to seal off one end with toothpicks, to keep it from coming out as you put it in , and feeling like you're an extra on an episode of "The Lucy show." You won't have that problem with whole birds because of the geometry of the critters. Pat the birds nice and dry and salt and pepper them , if you haven't followed one of Annalena's rubrics and salted them in the fridge overnight.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and also, clean out that pan, add some more olive oil, and when its hot, put in the birds, breast side down. Don't crowd them. You can get two, maybe three, in a large 12 inch fry pan. Do not touch them for four minutes or so, then check. If they're nice and brown, turn them over ,and if not, let them cook some more.

When everything is nice and brown, turn the birds breast side up and, either in the pan or on a baking sheet, move them to the oven. Ten minutes for boned birds, twenty for the whole thing. If you use the whole bird, jiggle the little legs to see if they come away easily. That's your test for doneness. For the boned birds, if you've cooked them in the pan for about 8 minutes, ten minutes in the oven is plenty.

Pull them out. The cheese will have melted and made a bit of a mess, but who cares. When you cut into the bird, you will get a lovely "ooze" of cheese, with the beautiful green of the spinach, and the gentle "hit" of onion, garlic and nutmeg.

And everyone will think you're a star. I'm serious. These are no harder than cutlets, but somehow, working with the whole bird, you become a "chef" as compared to a "housewife" in people's mind.

If you are responsible for feeding children, you might be able to get them to eat vegetables this way. In Annalena's experience, children, confronted with a chicken that is a size they can relate to, will eat it, and everything with it. Years ago, cooking for her little buddy Nora, Annalena made quail. She thought that Nora would reject "eating those baby birds." Rather, her response was "It's ABOUT TIME someone made a chicken my size." She ate two, gave me a greasy kiss on the cheek and thanked me for "the best dinner EVER."

Well, if you can get that kinda love from a six, seven or eight year old.. need I say more? Hell, if you can get that kinda love from your partner. Make the dish every night.

I mentioned quail and I suppose that this would work with those birds. Somehow, though, cheese is not making it for Annalena on that one. Maybe some pancetta or bacon instead? Pork and spinach do well together. If someone tries it, PLEASE let Annalena know. If you do a different green, like swiss chard or, for my friend Chris the Empress of Kale, kale, tell me. I want to hear about all the variations on this wonderfully adaptable dish.