Just what you wanted! Another dead blog in your RSS!

I'm sure I'm wondering if I'm ever going to get around to writing in this stoopid blog I've been thinking about writing. I always said to myself that another food blog is especially worthless without a camera to show you how clean my kitchen is. Anyway, I was on my way home from the grocery store with some awesome vittles and NPR played me a story about how there's a place in Pennsylvania where the carp are so crowded that ducks walk on their heads to eat bread that passers-by throw. Well, if they can get away with explaining that to me without showing a photograph then surely I can describe cooking a bird everyone's already seen before.

Anyway, I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted. I wanted to try a Cornish game hen. Of course, this is just a tiny chicken killed in its salad days before its tiny chicken dreams have been dashed into what we call "poultry seasoning." And it's also a cross between a Plymouth Rock chicken and a Cornish one. Also, just because it's called a "hen" doesn't necessarily mean it's a female. A lesson I'm sure we've all learned the hard way at least once or twice. I was going to include the brace in a series of photos I've been doing but, again, I don't have a camera.

Well, I thawed that fucker out in the sink just like you're not supposed to until I could slide one of my fingers into its cavity. Believe me, I had big plans for that cavity and halfway through the Freixenet I surely didn't mind if it was only dressed as a hen. Anyway, I also had a pound of chicken livers, a pound of braunschweiger, some cream cheese and a sweet onion. So, we fry a few livers in butter and diced onion until they're still ever-so-slightly pink in the middle. While that's cooking we put a nice glob of the braunschweiger and cream cheese in a mixing bowl. When the livers are pink I put them on the cutting board and dice them up with the onion and put them back in the frying pan.

A this point you should get out that bottle of bourbon you've had stashed away in the pantry since last Wednesday and deglaze the pan with it. If you wanna be an asshole about it or if you actually have friends over to impress you can do that while it's over a hot, hot skillet so's to make a giant flame. Or if you're rather panty-waisted you can do it off the heat. Cook that down and dump it in the mixing bowl while you're whipping the shit out of the cream cheese and braunschweiger.

Now, after the shit is creamed you could stop here and have an awesome party dip. Lord knows I'm going to try an ruin my appetite with the leftover part. However, since I'm not going to a party I'm going to cram that stuff in the bird's cavity. I'm sure you could stuff butterflied chicken breasts with it, too. Or stuff a whole bird. Myself, I co-opted the recipe from one for a duck while including a tip of the hat to my grandma who made a smiliar party dip. It's versatile is what I'm saying. And high in vitamin A. I'm sure it will feature heavily later in my "By the Vitamins Roundup '09."

Well, the bird is stuffed and trussed with a bit from an old handkerchief. All it needs now is to roast for an hour at 350, with the last ten minutes or so around 400 to brown the skin.

And I suppose you want side dishes, too, eh? Well I wrapped a potato in bacon and threw it in with the bird simply because I'd never wrapped a potato in bacon and it sounds delightful. More bacon in a pan with the other half of the onion and cook some greens or some shit in there. That's what I'm doing. Greens. They're fifty cents a bunch at the Pic Pac, which also happens to be my favorite grocery store on account of their excellent meats and the fact that nothing has changed in there since 1987 or so.

Also, these "hens" are probably too big for one person too handle. Still, I like the idea of a whole roasted bird on a plate for each person. Anyway, he weigh around a pound and a quarter and if half of that is bones and stuff that's still a load of meat. You could cut them in half or use leftovers in a number of delightful ways. English men for English wars!

Anyway, the moral of the story is probably that this pate-like substance is dynamite in any form as well as in the bird and the whole evening could be done for two at under $15 with way more pate-like substance than you need--something like a pound and change. This, naturally, doesn't include all the champagne I'm drinking with it.