{"id":4639,"date":"2011-12-14T22:35:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T03:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=4639"},"modified":"2011-12-14T22:35:58","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T03:35:58","slug":"cooking-the-coincidental-quail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/14\/cooking-the-coincidental-quail\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking the coincidental quail"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always figured that the first time I ate quail, it would happen because I’d spotted it on the menu at a restaurant I trusted to do the tiny things up right. Instead, my first time came about because while I was at A & H Seafood<\/a> buying a suckling pig to cook for Christmas dinner, I peeked into their freezer and spotted packages of frozen quail. And since I’m not one to pass up the opportunity for a new culinary experience, I picked up two packages.<\/p>\n

Why not just one? If you have to ask, you must not know me very well.<\/p>\n

Each package contained six quail, and they weren’t very impressive when frozen. Squashed together as they were, they looked like nothing more than a solid lump of frozen meat, giving no sense of what they once were.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But after a few days of thawing, each quail\u2014weighing in at about 4.66 ounces, if the gross weight of the package can be trusted\u2014because a bird again. And looked kind of cute, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I plucked a recipe from my all-time favorite cookbook\u2014James Beard’s American Cookery<\/em><\/a>, which is so well-written that it’s worth reading even if you have no intention of ever cooking anything. <\/p>\n

I chose the simplest recipe, not because I wasn’t up to a challenge, but because I wanted to taste the quail meat itself as purely as possible, unmasked by too heavy a sauce or too flavorful a spice. So after some butter, salt, pepper, and little else, plus 20 minutes in a 450-degree oven, here’s what I ended up with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So what were they like?<\/p>\n

Irene felt the quail tasted exactly like chicken, while the quail seemed a little gamier than that to me, almost as if there was a slight liver flavor. Though as I thought about it, I realized that could have been a taste I was picking up from the pepper.<\/p>\n

In any case, we were both pleased, though I still look forward to eating quail prepared by a chef who knows what he or she is doing. Besides … I have six more quail in the freezer downstairs just waiting to be cooked according to a more complex recipe.<\/p>\n

But not for awhile yet. Because first comes the suckling pig!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always figured that the first time I ate quail, it would happen because I’d spotted it on the menu at a restaurant I trusted to do the tiny things up right. Instead, my first time came about because while I was at A & H Seafood buying a suckling pig to cook for Christmas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-4639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}