Two squabs unexpectedly flew into my kitchen this week, giving me the pleasure of rummaging through my cookbooks for a recipe to make with them. The dark color of the flesh under their skin promised a rich dish.
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The recipe I chose was Raymond Oliver’s Pigeon Crapaudine, from his book La Cuisine. In this traditional presentation, squabs are split open along the spine, flattened, broiled, and served with a piquant sauce diable. Once before I’d done another book’s version of this dish, in which I grilled the squab over an open fire and didn’t even attempt the elaborate composed sauce. No open fire this time, and Oliver’s sauce recipe was very different.
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My squabs split easily with a poultry shear. They tried to resist flattening, but eventually succumbed to whacks from a cast-iron frying pan.
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Oliver’s sauce diable recipe calls for shallots, wine vinegar, white wine, tomato sauce, and – can you believe it, from of one of the greatest French chefs of the 20th century? – ketchup! I was game to try that, but there was going to be one problem: Its piquancy comes from a heavy last-minute lacing of cayenne pepper, Tom’s and my least-liked hot flavoring. We’d have to adjust that.
To start, we quickly improvised a small Oliver-esque tomato sauce from canned Italian plum tomatoes, chopped red onion, butter, and dried marjoram.
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Meanwhile, Tom minced a big shallot, and I put it to cook in a tiny pot with wine vinegar and white wine.
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When the liquid had reduced by half, we stirred the mixture into the tomato sauce, added several big dollops of Tom’s spicy ketchup (“doctored” Heinz), and simmered it all for five minutes. Finally, he tasted the sauce and pepped it up with Tabasco and Cholula sauces. It was very lively – certainly devilish enough!
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When it was time to cook the squabs, I salted and peppered both sides, brushed on melted butter, and set them skin side down on the broiler pan. They did indeed look crapaudine, i.e., like frogs. (Recollection of my high-school biology dissection class – ugh!)
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After 12 minutes under the broiler, I took the squabs out, turned them over, and slathered more melted butter over them. It’s a French recipe, so what else would you expect? Mercifully, they looked less batrachian now.
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Back into the broiler they went for 8 minutes, until the skin was crisp and browned.
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Since I knew these little guys were going to be high-class finger food, I served them very simply, with just a few green peas alongside. Plus the sauce diable, of course, which I forgot to add to the plates when I took the photos.
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Not at all picturesque and predictably messy to eat, the squabs were quite delicious. That improvised spicy sauce was a perfect complement for the rich, dense meat. Even Tom, who is normally neither a poultry fancier nor an enthusiastic gnawer of bones, pronounced it an excellent dish.
Diane…your first sentence sounds like the beginning of a joke: “Two squabs unexpectedly flew into my kitchen…” so thanks for that! And thanks for the before and after pictures of those poor pummeled birds. (If they only knew before they spotted the open window!)