Maple Glazed Grilled Quail

I love cooking little birds. They are so festive. I prepared these quail for a weekend special last weekend. I used a partially boned quail-the breast is deboned, but the wing, leg, and thigh, bones are intact for a nicer presentation. Often I will stuff them and serve them with a sauce, but for these, I marinated and grilled them and served them with a maple vinaigrette.

Marinade

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 tablespoons of maple sugar (substitute brown if maple is unavailable)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1/4 cup sherry wine

2 tablespoons minced scallions

Marinate the birds for at least 1/2 hour before grilling

Vinaigrette

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon minced shallot

salt to taste (optional)

freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup vegetable oil

minced scallion for garnish

Combine the first five ingredients and let the flavors marry for a couple of hours, whisk in the oil.

Grill the quail over medium hot coals for about 4 minutes per side-they cook pretty quickly.

Spoon a little vinaigrette over the birds and sprinkle with minced scallion to serve.

Orange Roughy en Croute

On Saturday night I had one of the cooks make some fish fillets in pastry. This was one of the first times this cook had worked with puff pastry. He had a great time with them, carving decorations into the pastry and all. He plans on atending culinary school this fall, so I plan to keep giving him some challenging tasks this summer. We served the fish with ginger hallandaise.

New Super Food Combinations

I was reading about some of the super foods, and blueberries and oatmeal were both mentioned. I combined them in a couple ways this week. First a blueberry oatmeal pancakes. I pulled a recipe off the web and served them with maple syrup. They made a delicious and tender pancake. I can't find the recipe I used for them now, but there are alot of recipes out there for them. Second was putting fresh blueberries in oatmeal cookies-I used the recipe from the top of the oatmeal box lid. They turned out really well too.