{"id":16356,"date":"2018-03-29T21:55:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T21:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=16356"},"modified":"2018-03-29T21:55:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T21:55:12","slug":"roasted-poussin-cinnamon-cumin-sweet-potatoes-cress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=16356","title":{"rendered":"roasted poussin, cinnamon-cumin sweet potatoes, cress"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For weeks I’d been saving a recipe I’d recently found, ‘Poussin with quince and myrtle’, only because I had\u00a0become interested in the use of myrtle in Mediterranean food recipes. I had even managed to\u00a0accumulate a decent stash of it. Poussin may be even more difficult to find than myrtle,\u00a0even in cosmopolitan New York, so when I spotted some good local candidates at Eataly Flatiron recently, I jumped on them.<\/p>\n

Having concentrated so much on the myrtle, I had forgotten that one of the other somewhat\u00a0scarce ingredients in the formula was “1 quince”<\/em>, a\u00a0wonderful fruit, but one which can only be found in this\u00a0area in the fall.<\/p>\n

I had to start over. Apparently I don’t have enough French, or French-oriented cookbooks, because I couldn’t find any\u00a0recipes for poussin\u00a0in my bookshelves, even in\u00a0Julia Child’s\u00a02 fussy volumes. It was back to the internet, and there I found\u00a0a recipe<\/a> after my own heart: It was simple, virtually foolproof, required no attention once it was slipped into the oven, it asked for no ingredients other than those that I already had, and those it did specify were\u00a0among of my favorites.<\/p>\n

The recipe\u00a0was from Nigella Lawson<\/a>, and it became the basis for what I cooked last night. Oddly, I thought\u00a0it\u00a0was actually a little too<\/em> simple, and,\u00a0either intentionally or not,\u00a0too\u00a0abbreviated<\/em>:\u00a0<\/i>one or more errors in its transfer to that web site may have been the source of my\u00a0confounding.<\/p>\n

In any event, my adjustments at home included seasoning the cavities of the birds and including thyme sprigs and a lemon wedge in each, and cutting the potatoes into slightly smaller sizes. I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0rest the poussin on\u00a0thick pieces of bread, as she wrote she had done in the past, and I roasted both birds and sweet potatoes in the same oven pan. I forgot about Lawson’s suggestion of serving the dish with English mustard (had I included it, I would have added grated fresh horseradish to a Dijon),\u00a0but I think, in the end, the herb and the lemon\u00a0was just\u00a0the right amount of excitement.<\/p>\n

The meal was terrific, and the wine a perfect pairing.<\/p>\n