SERVES 4
Katniss takes a bite of “fowl” and finds her mouth filled with orange juice, an ingredient that she’s only tasted once—when she first visited the Capitol in The Hunger Games. The use of blood orange here seems appropriate.
This dish is a very elegant one for dinner parties, especially a Capitol-style Hunger Games party for adults. The combination of wine, sage and blood orange is delicious.
4–6 SMALL QUAILS
SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE
8 BLOOD ORANGES, DIVIDED
1 WHOLE STALK OF CELERY
1 SMALL BUNDLE FRESH THYME
1 TABLESPOON OLIVE OIL
6 TABLESPOONS BUTTER
6 CLOVES GARLIC, WHOLE AND UNPEELED
10 SAGE LEAVES
1½ CUPS SWEET WHITE WINE, DIVIDED
QUAIL:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Wash the birds thoroughly inside and out and pat dry with paper towels.
Rub them liberally with salt and pepper.
Cut off the 2 ends of 6 of the oranges (save 2 oranges for the gravy); stand them on end and slice off the skin.
Slice the oranges into 5 or 6 rounds each. Set aside.
Remove the tougher outside ribs of the celery until you reach the white, dense bulb and slice across thinly.
Put celery into a bowl and mix in the thyme and a small pinch of salt and pepper, then stuff the cavity of each quail with it. (You will fit barely a tablespoon of the celery mixture into each bird.)
Pull the skin at the front of each quail cavity forward to cover the filling, and tightly tie up with wet twine.
Heat a thick-bottomed pan on medium-high heat
Add the olive oil and the quail.
Cook until lightly golden on all sides.
Add the butter, garlic and sage and cook for 3–4 minutes, until golden brown.
Bake for 45 minutes, checking every 10–15 minutes and adding the wine at intervals, just enough to keep the pan slightly moist at all times.
When cooked, carefully remove the quail from the oven and rest upside down on a dish, allowing all the juices and moisture to relax back into the breast meat for at least 5 minutes.
While your meat is resting, make the gravy.
GRAVY:
Remove all the fat from the roasting pan and place the pan on low heat.
In the bottom of the pan will be your cooked, soft, sweet, whole garlic cloves and bits of browning from the birds.
When this gets hot, deglaze the pan with about ⅔ cup of wine and a wooden spoon.
Squeeze the juice from the 2 remaining blood oranges into the pan and simmer gently.
Push the cooked garlic cloves out of their skins with a spoon (discard the skins).
Pour any of the juices that have drained out of the rested birds into the pan with the gravy, simmer and season to taste.
Serve with roasted vegetable of your choice.