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Ballotines of Partridges
Bone the birds carefully, lay them open and dust them over with salt, pepper and powdered sweet herbs. Prepare a sufficient quantity of forcemeat with poultry livers, bacon, shallots and sweet herbs and season it to taste with salt and pepper. Line the inside of the birds with the forcemeat, then lay over that a few thin strips of cold tongue, blanched pistachio nuts and cooked truffles. Roll the birds up tightly, bind each one in a separate piece of cloth, put them into a stewpan, moisten to their height with stock, and boil gently for half an hour. Drain the birds, remove the cloths, bind them up again tightly, put them between two dishes with a moderate weight on the top, and leave until quite cold. When ready unbind the birds, trim them neatly and brush them over with liquid glaze. Spread a folded napkin or a fancy dish-paper over a dish, lay the birds on it, garnish them with croutons of aspic jelly or a circle of chopped jelly, and serve.
A cold pressed galantine in all but name: boned game birds stuffed, poached in stock, weighted until firm, then glazed and served cold. Nearly everything that can go wrong happens at the rolling and pressing stage.
- The hinge: roll tight, press coldA slack roll poaches into a hollow cylinder that collapses when sliced. Roll the bird around the forcemeat with real tension, tie the cloth at both ends like a sausage, and re-tie it while still hot before weighting so the meat sets in shape. "A moderate weight" means a plate with a couple of cans on it, not a press.
- ClothScalded muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth. A modern equivalent is a tight roll in plastic wrap with an outer layer of foil, twisted at the ends; it holds the shape better and keeps the stock from washing the seasoning out.
- "Boil gently" means poach"Boil gently" means a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil -- hold the stock just below a simmer, barely trembling. An actual boil bursts the forcemeat through the skin and squeezes the bird dry. Half an hour is plausible for a partridge of roughly 12-14 oz, but the forcemeat contains raw liver, so check that the centre reaches 165F before pulling them out.
- Sweet herbsThe mixture varied from cook to cook; thyme, marjoram, parsley, a little savory and sometimes a pinch of powdered bay are the usual candidates for game. Dried and sifted fine, since this is dusted onto the opened bird.
- Forcemeat proportionsNone are given. A workable ratio is 8 oz poultry or partridge livers to 4 oz fat bacon and one large shallot, ground fine and bound with an egg; that fills two birds. Season it more assertively than seems right, as cold food reads flat.
- Cold tongue and trufflesCured beef or veal tongue, cooked and chilled, cut in matchsticks; it is there for the pink line in the cut face as much as the flavour. Cooked truffles can be replaced with a firm dark mushroom, though you lose the intended effect. Pistachios must be blanched and skinned or they bleed brown.
- Liquid glazeNot a sugar glaze. Reduce the poaching stock until syrupy, add gelatin if it does not set on its own, cool to the consistency of unbeaten egg white, and brush in two or three thin coats on the chilled birds. The aspic croutons are the same liquid set firm in a shallow tray and cut into cubes or chopped.
- PartridgeFarmed chukar or grey partridge, 12-16 oz, is what to buy; wild-shot birds are generally not sold legally in the United States. Ask for them whole and unsplit, since the recipe needs the skin intact. A boned quail scales down, a small poussin scales up.
- Yield and serviceOne bird per person served whole, or chill thoroughly and cut each into three or four thick slices for a cold buffet platter. Everything is done a day ahead; only the glazing and garnish are last-minute.
Ballotine comes from the French ballot, a bundle or bale, and that is exactly what the technique produces: a boned bird tied into a parcel. Escoffier-era kitchens tended to distinguish ballotines, usually served hot, from galantines, pressed and served cold in aspic, but the line was never strictly policed and the version here is a galantine in method throughout. It belongs to the great age of the cold buffet, when hotel kitchens displayed glazed, sliced, truffle-studded meats on napkin-draped platters where guests could see them, and the labour of boning several small birds by hand was a visible part of the value. Game was a staple of American restaurant menus into the early twentieth century, before the Lacey Act and later state laws ended the commercial market in wild birds and pushed game cookery onto farmed stock.