and here's the recap

Dinner turned out quite well. As it turned out, I was very glad that I brined the quail otherwise I believe they would have been a bit on the dry side. I ended up brining them for about 2 1/2 hours. (Did I mention that there were about 23 quail altogether? Holy cow!)

I invited our neighbor, Ms J, over and that was a good thing. Of course we love her company, but there was way too much food for just the three of us. Of course little j ate no risotto and no quail. She did, however, lap up the blackberry sage sauce.

I do have to comment on the combination of quail and the sauce: a marriage made in heaven! Quail is a relatively strong flavored meat, even more so than duck I would say. The sauce, which included balsamic, red wine, chicken stock, blackberries, sage, and butter, more than stood up to the quail. In fact, it really rounded out the flavor. I would use the sauce on just about any wild game and was thinking how nice it would be with a good venison chop.

The risotto was just okay. I think I will keep looking for a good mushroom risotto. The cauliflower got nixed by little j and replaced with green beans (steamed, drizzled with Tuscan olive oil and sea salt). We rounded out the meal with a bottle of grenacha which was just spicy enough to hold its own against the main dish.

Now I am left with about a dozen quail which, thankfully, Big J took off the bone last night. So tonight we are having a pasta with capers, garlic and breadcrumbs (from a leftover baguette) and the roasted quail. I predict that we may be having some sort of salad (a version of Cobb?) with the remaining quail before the week is out.