Stuffed Quail with Chanterelle Sauce

Start with the stuffing: melt the 1 tablespoon of butter in the pan, add the sprigs of thyme and the finely diced shallots. Sauté for a few minutes until the shallots are translucent. Add the chicken livers (they benefit from a good milk soaking from the day before but if you don’t have the time, skip it) to the pan and cook for about 5 min (you’re only looking for a bit of color, they will continue to cook once inside the quail). Yes, they will be pink and bloody – DON’T PANIC!

Move the chicken liver/onion mixture to a bowl (remove the thyme sprigs), wipe the pan, add the other tablespoon of butter and sauté the sausage meat until it changes color.

In the bowl of the food processor add the chicken liver mixture, the cooked sausage, the breadcrumbs, the milk, the cognac and the salt and pepper. Blend until very smooth. Traditionally, a mousseline would be passed through a tamis…but this is home cooking, folks!!!!

Take the stuffing and fill each quail taking care to reshape the quails as you go along. Heat some butter in a cast iron pan and sauté them until they get a great color on them, turning once. Place in a preheated oven at 375F for 15-20 min. Spoon sauce (recipe below) over the quail and serve.

For the sauce, I start the chanterelles in a dry pan, I want as much concentrated flavor as I can get. Once the chanterelles give up most of their water, I sprinkle a little salt and add the cognac. Ignite (carefully) the cognac for a quick flambee. Once the flames die down ad the cream and reduce for a few minutes…it’s now ready to spoon over the roasted quail. You can certainly add some garlic to this recipe but I skipped it this time.