Quails with raisins and sweet wine

[MrSpock]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here's the disclaimer: This is translated from the French cookbook "ΐ table avec Thermomix". Note that I haven't tried this recipe, so if you do try it, please let me know how it turned out!

Quails with raisins and sweet wine

1           Small onion
1 cube   Chicken broth
800g      Potatoes
4           Quails
Salt, pepper
50g        Raisins
1 tbsp    Cornstarch
1 tbsp    Sweet wine (muscatel or port)

• Put 700g water, onion peeled and cut into two and the broth in the bowl. Put the basket in the cooking bowl and set 5 minutes Varoma temperature, speed 1
• Meanwhile, peel and cut potatoes into large cubes
• Open the quails to flatten (you can ask your butcher to do this at the time of purchase). Put the quails in the Varoma “on their back”, add salt and pepper and sprinkle with raisins
• At the stop of the timer, put the potatoes in the cooking basket; place the Varoma with the quails on the bowl and set 20 minutes Varoma temperature, speed 1
• At the stop of the timer, reserve the potatoes somewhere warm and, if necessary, continue cooking quails another 10 min at Varoma temperature, speed 1 (instead you can put the quails in the oven to brown for 10 min)
• Reserve the cooking juices in the bowl and arrange the quails and potatoes in a warm serving dish
• Add the cornstarch and sweet wine to the cooking juice in the bowl and set 3 min at 100°, speed 3
• Mix 5 sec speed 8
• Decorate the serving dish with sauce and serve the remainder in a gravy boat

Thermomix tip: Instead of potatoes, serve sweet potatoes: It will emphasize the sweet and salty effect of this dish.

members' comments

JD - I tried this recipe but changed it to chicken thighs with sultana grapes and port. I had some mashed potato over from last night so put pumpkin and carrot in the basket and put some cauliflower and broccoli to the varoma tray. Sprinkled a handful of large sultana grapes over the thighs 20 minutes into the cooking for the final 10 minutes. The jury is still out on the sauce but somehow I will try and inject a little more flavour into it next time and will discard  at least half of it before thickening. I had to use 3 tblspns cornflour & 3T Port to get it to the consistency I wanted and there was far too much of it.  Comparing the sauce to the delicious mustard sauce in the Fillet mignon recipe, this one is nowhere near as tasty.  As DH won't eat dried fruit of any description, I remembered an old recipe called Chicken Veronica which used grapes and had no complaints from him with the substitution.

In summing up, the meal was easy to prepare and the only let down was the sauce.  Oh, the onion needs to be blitzed for a short time at the beginning too as it couldn't handle speed 1 just being cut in half.

[judydawn]

Thanks DrSpock, as I said before, I will use chicken pieces instead of Quail but should work just the same - may need a little extra cooking but that's not a problem.

[Thermomixer]

Ate the risk of sounding like a broken record, here's the disclaimer: This is translated from the French cookbook "ΐ table avec Thermomix". Note that I haven't tried this recipe, so if you do try it, please let me know how it turned out!

Don't worry  - if you check out all the recipes I "translated" from the "A Tutto Vapore" book, you won't feel bad!!

Thanks, great to have somebody ready, willing and able to do it.   

[judydawn]

I tried this recipe for tea tonight but changed it to chicken thighs with sultana grapes and port. I had some mashed potato over from last night so put pumpkin and carrot in the basket and put some cauliflower and broccoli to the varoma tray. Sprinkled a handful of large sultana grapes over the thighs 20 minutes into the cooking for the final 10 minutes. The jury is still out on the sauce but somehow I will try and inject a little more flavour into it next time and will discard  at least half of it before thickening. I had to use 3 tblspns cornflour & 3T Port to get it to the consistency I wanted and there was far too much of it.  Comparing the sauce to the delicious mustard sauce in the Fillet mignon recipe, this one is nowhere near as tasty.  As DH won't eat dried fruit of any description, I remembered an old recipe called Chicken Veronica which used grapes and had no complaints from him with the substitution.

In summing up, the meal was easy to prepare and the only let down was the sauce.  Oh, the onion needs to be blitzed for a short time at the beginning too as it couldn't handle speed 1 just being cut in half.

[Thermomixer]

I remembered an old recipe called Chicken Veronica which used grapes

I remembered chicken veronique too, a few months ago, and could not find a recipe in all my books !!!!  Thought that I was going crazy! Then Maggie Beer did a version on Cook and the Chef !!  Didn't think to Google it 

[judydawn]

OK Thermomixer, then maybe you could come up with a tastier sauce then we would both have the perfect TMX Chicken Veronique