June 12, 2012 Dinner – A Group of First Tastes Guinea Fowl, Kumatos, Georgia O’Keefe’s Vanilla Ice Cream and Stewed Rhubarb Recipes and a Cuisine Minceur Meal

June 12, 2012 Dinner – A Group of First Tastes  Guinea Fowl, Kumatos, Georgia O’Keefe’s Vanilla Ice Cream and Stewed Rhubarb Recipes and a Cuisine Minceur Meal

Last week we had talked to Susan and Charlie Palmer about getting together for a meal on Tuesday, so on Saturday we purchased a 4 ½ lb. Guinea Fowl from Pollo Real Farms in Soccorro at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market.  On Tuesday morning I received a “We are back, e mail message from Cynthia Elliott, so we coordinated a dinner plan for Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m.

I woke up in a panic Tuesday morning because I had never cooked a guinea fowl, so I began looking at cookbooks.  I finally found an interesting recipe for Roasted Guinea Fowl in Michel Guérard’s Cuisine Minceur Cookbook (William Morrow and Co. 1976).  Michel Guérard is famous because he created “The Cuisine of Slimness” which takes the fat and calories out of Classical French Grande Cuisine.  When we last traveled to France, we ate dinner at his Michelin Three Star Restaurant in Eugénie-les-Bains and stayed at his spa for a night.  So I tried to build a menu around the Minceur idea.  The Guinea Fowl recipe 115 on page 217 was very simple.  It used a Guérard creation of fromage blanc (literally yogurt blended with ricotta cheese).

1 Tbsp. of yogurt blended with ricotta cheese (fromage blanc by Guérard),  

5 Tbsp. of parsley,

1 Tbsp. of minced chives,

2 tsp. of minced tarragon,

2 minced shallots

2 medium mushrooms, stems trimmed, rinsed, and finely minced

plus salt and pepper to taste

per 2 ½ lb. guinea fowl (or chicken or pheasant) salted and peppered and brushed with

1 tsp. of salad oil

I had a 4 ½ lb. bird, so I doubled the recipe.

I had all the fresh ingredients, except the fresh yogurt so I substituted milk and cream for the yogurt to emulsify the above parsley Garniture mixture.  I started gathering herbs and chopping and blending them with the blended ricotta cheese and milk and cream fromage blanc mixture at around 3:45 p.m.  By 4:45 p.m. I had separated the skin from the flesh of the bird from the neck cavity back to behind the legs and smeared the creamy herb mixture evenly around the bird and then threw the remaining Garniture into the neck and tail cavities and trussed them closed.  We had a skillet with red chili oil left over from last night’s trout dinner on the stove, so I brushed the bird with the red chili flavored oil.

The cooking instructions were 425° for 20 minutes and then 350° for 40 minutes.  I preheated the oven at 425° and placed the fowl breast side up in the middle of the oven on the top rack of a covered roasting pan filled with about ½ inch of water.  Suzette called at around 5:00 and we discussed the cooking time and the weight of the fowl and decided to use convection cooking and to extend the time of cooking, so I turned on the convection and extended the time by five minutes at 425° and then reduced the temperature to 350° and set the timer for 40 minutes. A bit after 5:30 p.m. when Suzette walked in we looked at the bird. The exposed breast side was golden brown but the thigh bottom side was still white and uncooked looking, so we flipped the bird to expose the bottom and Suzette basted it with more red chili oil and we put it back into the oven until Cynthia and Ricardo arrived at around 6:30 p.m. bearing a PPI of Pilon, a Puerto Rican dish made with boiled plantains and a meat and vegetable mixture for us to try. 

We turned off the oven and opened a bottle of Handley Brut Rosé of Pinot Noir, which was the best rose champagne we tasted in May at the Pinot Noir Festival in Anderson Valley, California (which is saying something when your neighbor is Roederer Estates), and walked out to the back yard to let Cynthia inspect the garden area that she had designed for us (Cynthia is a landscape architect).  At around 7:00 p.m. Suzette covered the fowl with aluminum foil and we went over to Susan and Charlie Palmer’s house for dinner. 

Sauce for Guinea fowl

The recipe says to cover the roasted fowl with aluminum and let it rest while you make a sauce using:

¾ cup of chicken stock

1 Tbsp of parsley, minced

1 clove of garlic, crushed  

I picked and chopped 1 Tbsp. of parsley and picked scapes and two bulbs of garlic from the garden and cleaned and crushed about ½ Tbsp. of small cloves of garlic and a couple of scapes finely chopped.  We then poured the cooking medium in the bottom of the roasting dish into a four cup pyrex measuring cup.  The fat immediately separated from the water and cooking juices sank to the bottom.  Suzette skimmed the fat off with a small ladle.  This left just the cooking juices in about 1 cup of water, so we threw the herb mixture into a plastic refrigerator container and poured in the cooking juices liquid and capped it and put it in a bag to take to the Palmers.

Since Cynthia and Ricardo had never seen the Palmer’s house and garden, after we said our hellos, Charlie took us on a tour of the garden and his wood working shop. The Palmer’s garden had been on a garden tour a couple of weeks before so it was in beautiful condition.  I have never seen it so beautiful, with its waterfall and rivulet lined with large flagstones of sandstone and its flagstone and crusher fine pathway across the fountain area surrounded by Japanese style bent pine trees.

After the garden tour and a tour of the shop and Charlie’s new harpsichord project, while Charlie was showing Ricardo his newly constructed Chinese Cabinet joined without any nails, Cynthia made a salad dressing for her green salad with Kumatos.  Susan plated up steamed green beans (haricot vert) and asparagus and roasted turnips and sweet potatoes.  And Suzette and I heated the sauce and carved the bird off the bone and cut the thighs and breasts in halves so there would be enough portions for 6 persons and plated and sauced the guinea fowl. 

At around 8:00 p.m. we finally served dinner.  It was glorious.  I had never tasted Kumatos and I loved them.  Kumatos are a hybrid variety of tomato developed in Spain (“Olmeca” in Spain) and distributed through a tightly controlled international production organization.  It has a dark brown velvety color and tastes sweeter than an average tomato.  Susan steamed the asparagus in her vertical steamer that does such a great job of steaming asparagus.  The guinea fowl was tender and the cooking juices of the bird had combined with the ricotta and herbs and the sauce into a spongy, moist, soft textured cake of herbs (“truffée au persil” is the phrase used by Guérard) that was heavenly with the rich gamey fowl.  I liken the flavor of the free ranged guinea fowl to that of a wild turkey; a little darker and gamier than a wild pheasant. 

We drank and ate and talked with great spirits.

About fifteen minutes after everyone had finished their plates of food I went back home to fetch the Vanilla Ice Cream and Rhubarb and Strawberry Stew Suzette had made the night before using recipes from A Painter’s Kitchen by Margaret Wood (Red Crane Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico).  Margaret was Georgia O’Keefe’s cook and companion from 1977 to 1982 and now lives in Santa Fe.  Also, Margaret is attending a book signing and luncheon at the Center for Ageless Living on July 20, 2012. 

Margaret and Georgia’s Vanilla ice cream recipe is:

 1/2 cup local honey

2 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 pints whipped heavy cream

Margaret and Georgia’s Stewed Rhubarb recipe is:  

1 lb. rhubarb

1 cup strawberries

1 cup Mexican blond granulated sugar

1 cup water

We had bought fresh rhubarb at the Farmer’s Market in Santa Fe last Saturday that Suzette cooked with fresh strawberries using the above recipe into a thick stew. 

Susan cut up a platter of freshly made chocolate brownies.  We each made dessert plates with scoops of the vanilla ice cream, rhubarb/strawberry stew and brownies and drank the Zonin Proseco for a lovely light dessert.  We finally gathered up our respective bowls and said goodnight to each other around 10:30 p.m.  I would say that the dinner was decidedly light.  No one felt full, although we had eaten lots of food.  I discovered that this light, fresh ingredient cuisine is the joy of Cuisine Minceur.

Bon Appétit