Sunday lunch – ‘Lazy’ style

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a ‘Sunday lunch’ entry. It’s not because I haven’t done any cooking lately, but most of the time I have been making traditional dishes such as pork roast Maréchal style, paprika chicken, meatloaf with ‘salade liégeoise’, etc. I’ve posted these recipes before and have therefore refrained from writing about them again.

Today, however, I’m cooking something special; simple but special. On Friday my friend and I visited Rob’s Gourmet Market again. It was meant to be a kind of scouting trip to collect some ideas for the upcoming holidays: Christmas and New Year. Seeing all that glorious food was very tempting though, and one thing led to another. By the time we joined the queue at the cash register our caddy was laden with goodies.

The prime catch was an over two kilo ‘pindade’ (guinea fowl) from a farm called ‘Le Devant’ located in the village of La Chapelle-Naude in the French Saône-et-Loire department. The grower was at Rob’s to promote his produce, serving roasted pieces of guinea fowl and ‘poulet de Bresse’ – another specialty of his farm - to the shoppers. He even explained how to prepare the birds in order to enhance their unique flavour. It includes putting a ‘petit Gervais’ (fresh cream cheese) and chopped apple in the bird’s cavity. Next you are to coat the whole bird in butter and roast it in a 160°C oven for 45 minutes per kilo.

A 'prize bird' of well over two kilos.

Care to join us, because this is way too much meat for two people ...?

This morning, when I started preparing the guinea fowl before putting it in the oven, I realized that I didn’t have any cream cheese or apples. I did have some yoghurt with diced apple in the fridge. So I carefully spooned 125 gr. of it in the emptied bird, followed by a bay leave and some thyme, just like the man had explained.

Instead of coating it in butter and roasting it – which always leaves you with a messy and greasy oven, I decided to cook the guinea fowl in my handy chicken brick. Because of its size I was afraid that it wouldn’t fit in the brick, but I managed to squeeze it in – only just. I sprinkled some special chicken herbs mixture over it and put a few lumps of lightly salted butter between the thighs. It has been sitting in the oven like that for an hour now and still has another 50 minutes to go.

I’m calling this a lunch ‘lazy style’, because I’ve bought all the trimmings ready-made at Rob’s too: cooked apples with cranberries and walnuts, baby pears poached in red wine and a spicy celeriac mash. All I have to do is shove the lot in an oven for 15 minutes before serving it.

How lazy can one get?!

As for the wine, I’ll let you take one guess …

Enjoy what is left of the weekend!