The coffee-based rub on these quail halves wake up both the bird and the eater. Most of your friends probably think of quail as exotic, but the birds are easy to grill. Opt for semi-boneless quail, if you can. If all you can find are whole quail, it’s simple to cut them into halves through their backbone and breastbone with kitchen scissors. SERVES 4
RED-EYE RUB
2 | tablespoons coarse-ground coffee beans |
1 | tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper |
1 | heaping teaspoon kosher salt or coarse sea salt |
8 | quail, preferably semi-boneless, halved |
People have cooked with charcoal for centuries, but the familiar briquettes of today are as new as the automobile age. In the past, people made charcoal by piling logs into a pyramid, covering the mound with earth to restrict air circulation, and burning the wood down to carbon. The process resulted in irregular lumps or chunks of high-heat fuel, useful for broiling or roasting food in an outside fire pit or an indoor wood stove. This style of charcoal still exists—and works great for grilling—but the briquette replaced it as the most popular cooking fuel thanks to Henry Ford’s Model T.
Ford used a number of wood appointments in his early cars, parts cut to order at a mill he operated in the northern forests of Michigan. A man who hated waste as much as he loved profits, Ford became increasingly bothered by the mushrooming stacks of wood scraps at his plant. The pieces were too small to make regular charcoal, but he realized that he could still convert them to carbon, grind the coals into a powder, add a binding agent, and compress the granulated mixture into pillow-shaped briquettes.
Ford got his friend Thomas Edison to design a production facility, which went into full operation in 1921, a few decades ahead of its time. The auto magnate initially envisioned his little packets of firepower as an industrial fuel, to be sold directly to businesses. He later marketed the charcoal to the public through Ford dealerships, but he died too soon to see how and why backyard cooks would turn his product into an industry of its own. Compact, long-burning, and uniform in heat, briquettes were destined for the grill, but they arrived there with the speed of a Model T.