Cornish Game Hen & Fingerling Potatoes

Rex — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:48:28 +0000

A few things came together to make dinner tonight. 1) I had a cornish game hen in the freezer from class last semester. 2) I’d been reading What Einstein Told His Cook and saw a recipe for a cornish game hen basted in soy sauce. 3) I had the Tare from the Momofuku book in the fridge and figured it would be well-served in that basting liquid. 4) I saw that video from goop.com earlier this week where gweneth paltrow cooks some fingerling potatoes in a very similar style to Heston Blumenthal. It involves a pre-boil and a long roast to get crispy baked potatoes. kinda.
Peeling fingerlings is a pain in the ass, it gave me cramps in my hands. I peeled the fingerlings and boiled them in some salty water for about 8 minutes. Then I strained them and beat them around in the colander to give them some rough edges. Then I tossed them in olive oil and threw them in a square pyrex baking dish to serve as the base for my cornish game hen.

The game hen was brined in a quart of water with a 1/4 cup of both brown sugar and kosher salt. I left it in the fridge for about an hour. Meanwhile I threw together 1/4 cup of tare plus a little bit of soy sauce, 1Tbs or so of peanut oil, about 1Tbs each garlic and ginger, roughly chopped. I put all this together in the cup that came with our immersion blender and blitzed it up good. It came out opaque and creamy looking. the ginger and garlic pieces totally disappeared. You can barely see the bits on the surface of the raw game hen. I rinsed the game hen and stuffed it with some random fresh herbs. sage, rosemary and thyme, I think. I put the cornish hen on top of the potatoes, breast side down, and brushed it with the tare/soy mixture. Into a 400° oven it went.

Every 10 minutes I opened the oven and basted on more of the soy & tare mixture. After 30 minutes I flipped the bird breast side up and basted it again. Repeat this process until the bird looks like it might start burning, or an hour has gone by. I also put a 1/4 cup of water into the dish if the juices in the dish were burning, or starting to. Normally I’d check the temperature, but after an hour at 400°, this bird is cooked. I removed the bird and let it rest on a plate. I tossed the potatoes a bit in the pan and put them back in the oven to crisp up a bit more while the meat had a rest.

Actually, I didn’t love this meal. The flavor of the skin was a bit overwhelming. Way too much salt/soy flavor going on, and this is from someone who loves salt. The potatoes weren’t crispy, but they were excellent. The cornish game hen did have just about the perfect amount of meat for me, but it seems like a ridiculously tiny bird to bother cooking. This dinner needed something green, I think. But a dinner cooked is a good dinner.

Rex Roof » potatoes

Cornish Game Hen & Fingerling Potatoes