Pintade à la normande (Guinea fowl, Normandy-style)
Please note: this recipe is really easy to make. After you’ve caught and slaughtered an urban guinea fowl, the rest is a piece of cake. Minimal peeling, hardly any chopping, very little attention required, and another excuse to stock up on Calvados. Plus the whole dish is ready in roughly the same amount of time it takes to defrost boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
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Ingredients
- Guinea fowl or bird of choice, 1, 2-1/2 lbs (1.2 kg)
- Butter 3-1/2 Tbsp (50 g)
- Apples 4, peeled if you like, halved and of course, cored
- Onions 2, peeled and halved
- Garlic 1 clove, peeled and halved
- Oil 3 Tbsp
- Calvados (apple brandy) 2 Tbsp
- Cinnamon 2 pinches
- Salt & pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Dry your bird well and brush him with a bit of the oil. Salt and pepper the exterior and the inside. Put the garlic and half of the butter into the bird’s cavity.
- Place the fellow with his back up in a roasting pan. Put the onions around and pour the rest of the oil on the onions.
- Cook for 35 minutes.
- Add the apples. Pour the Calvados on top. Sprinkle on some cinnamon and add the rest of the butter cut in small pieces.
- Put the roasting pan back in the oven and roast for a further 20 minutes, dousing the bird regularly with the roasting juices.
- Cut the bird in 4 (you do have a poultry scissors right?).
- Place it artistically on a warmed serving plate with the onions and apples arranged into an adoring audience.
- Pour a bit of boiling water into the roasting pan and scrape gently to get all the good crusty stuff (in French called, much more eloquently, “sucs”) from the bottom of the pan.
- Serve the sucs on the bird and a full-bodied Fleurie or Brouilly in the wine glass.