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Broiled Squabs on Toast
Cut off the heads of six fat squabs; remove feet at the first joint, split open through the back, draw and remove their breast bones; envelope squabs in a coarse towel and flatten them with a cleaver. Mix on a plate a teaspoon salt, half a teaspoon white pepper and one tablespoon oil. Repeatedly roll the birds in the seasoning. Arrange on a double broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish on freshly prepared toasts, spread a little butter over them and serve with watercress around the dish.
A spatchcocked-and-grilled bird, written for a coal fire and a hinged wire broiler. The technique translates cleanly to a grill or an oven broiler, but the timing in the original assumes a very hot fire and small birds.
- What a squab isA squab is a young domestic pigeon, slaughtered at about four weeks before it flies, usually 12-16 oz whole. It is dark-meated and tender throughout. Order from a butcher or online game supplier; supermarkets rarely stock it. Poussin or Cornish hen can stand in, but they are white-meated and cook differently.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler. This is a hinged wire grill that clamps the flattened birds between two grates so they can be turned as a unit over live coals. A grill basket does the same job; without one, weight the birds with a foil-wrapped brick or heavy pan.
- Drawing the birds"Draw" means remove the viscera. Most squab now arrives already drawn, so you need only split it through the backbone, press it flat, and lift out the breastbone and ribs with a boning knife. The towel-and-cleaver step is simply to flatten without tearing the skin; the heel of your hand works as well.
- Heat and timingSix minutes a side is right only over a genuinely fierce fire, or 4-5 in. under a preheated broiler at full heat. Squab is traditionally served pink at the breast, around 135F; cooked through to the 165F that the USDA specifies for poultry it turns dry and livery. Decide which you want before you start, and know that the pink version carries the same risk as any rare poultry.
- The seasoningOne tablespoon of oil across six split birds is a bare film. Use two or three, and rub it in rather than rolling, so the salt sticks to the skin instead of the plate.
- Toast"Freshly prepared toasts" means bread toasted and buttered at the last moment; it is there to catch the juices. The recipe does not specify the loaf or the thickness. Cut each slice to roughly the footprint of a bird.
- YieldSix flattened squab serves six as a main course, or three generously. The recipe does not say how the watercress is dressed; a squeeze of lemon and a spoon of oil suits modern palates.
Squab was a commonplace luxury on the American and European table at the turn of the twentieth century. Pigeons were raised in lofts and dovecotes on farms and in towns, and because the birds breed repeatedly through the year they could supply tender meat outside the game seasons. Broiling a small flattened bird between wire grates was a standard treatment for anything young enough to be tender -- the same handling given spring chicken and quail -- and serving small birds on toast to soak up the juices is an old habit, often linked to the earlier practice of eating meat on a bread sop or trencher. Filippini's International Cook Book gathers dishes of this kind from the Delmonico's tradition he came out of, where broiled squab was a familiar rather than an exotic item. That squab now reads as a restaurant delicacy says more about the disappearance of the household pigeon loft than about the dish.